Secrets and Lies
by Laura Picken
Summary: Sara Lance is not the only one in the family with big secrets. And when those secrets are revealed, the consequences could change Starling City forever...set at the end of "League of Shadows", so *heavy* spoilers to that point in Season 2.
1. Chapter 1

Eeeeegads, what the hell am I doing?! I shouldn't be doing this! I signed up for NaNoWriMo to push myself on my novel Guardians of Shangri La (check my author page if you're interested), I sure as hell shouldn't be writing fanfic! But my muse has latched onto this idea and *refuses* to let it go until I get something down on paper, so here goes.

This story is a crossover between the CW show "Arrow" and the amazing novels of "The Dresden Files" by Jim Butcher. And as any "Dresden" fan knows, that means ground rules must be set, and set now.

ARROW TIMELINE: This story starts in the middle of the big final battle sequence in "League of Assassins" and enters into my own twisted version of the Twilight Zone from there. So if you're not totally caught up on Season 2 of Arrow, you might want to hold off on reading this.

DRESDEN CANON/TIMELINE: For fans out there not familiar with the combined collective amazingness of the source material I'm drawing from, Paul Blackthorne is the reason this story came into being in the first place. Blame him for being so darn fascinating to watch...anyway, that also means a level of taking the timeline of the show and the books, throwing them into a blender and hitting frappé. From the TV show, I am only taking two things: the physical appearance of both Dresden and Murphy. Sorry, I saw the show before reading the books, so even though the books describe them *very* differently, that's how I see them. Besides, it's the only way this story works. Otherwise, assume all Dresden novel cannon is fair game up to the end of "Changes" (which I'm slightly changing). "Ghost Story" and "Cold Days" don't exist for the purposes of this story. You'll understand why later. Also assume that all the events in my Dresden headcanon happened roughly twenty-five years prior to "Arrow". I'm sorry, you want to complain?! SORRY, I CAN'T HEAR YOU OVER THE NOISE OF THE BLENDER!

OTHER DISCLAIMER-Y BITS: Anyone who assumes I'm claiming any ownership of anything they recognize from the novels or TV shouldn't be reading *fan* fiction to begin with. There will be slightly more swearing than my regular fans might pick up on in my stories, but that's only because Harry Dresden, in the hell I'm going to put him through, would most definitely swear. I really have committed to NaNoWriMo, and as such my writing priority is my novel. This is just junk food to keep my muse happy so she'll keep churning out the word count. However, as such, that also means that updates to this story may be irregular and infrequent until NaNoWriMo is over on 12/1...unless I get a lot of positive comments encouraging me to keep going...hint, hint *wink*.

Anyway, enough warnings, let the adventure begin!

#

Officer Quentin Lance hadn't felt so helpless in a long time. He held onto his gun like a lifeline, hoping against all hope that he would find some way to get a shot off and disable one of these...master assassins so that they might somehow start to be evenly matched in this fight.

_Evenly matched?_ thought Lance. _Right..._The three men they were fighting would make ninjas look like teddy bears. Sara, to Lance's amazement, looked like she was holding her own against the one she was fighting, and one of Sara's traps had one of the ninjas dangling overhead by his ankle...but that advantage wouldn't last long, and Lance knew that he was rapidly running out of places to duck and cover.

"You should be more mindful of your surroundings," he heard Sara say to her opponent. Those were the last words she was able to get out, though, as the assassin she was fighting got the drop on her, caned her across the back of her leg with his sword and was now holding the blade of the weapon to her throat.

It was as if some sort of primal switch has flipped deep in the recesses of Lance's mind. A thousand memories flooded his thoughts in the blink of an eye. Getting the news of the Queen's Gambit's sinking, and finding out that Sara had been on the boat. Her funeral. Crying in meeting after meeting. Losing his grief in a bottle.

And, superimposed over all of those images, as it always would be...the image of a precious, dark-haired little girl at a Mayan temple...seconds away from being sacrificed.

It simply couldn't happen. He had thought he had lost Sara once, and it almost killed him. There was no way, in all the circles of a personal hell he could devise for himself...there was no way that he was *ever* going to lose one of his daughters again.

Not when he had the power to stop it.

The power came to him in small drops at first, weak and unstable from disuse, but he poured all of the fuel of a father's instinctive fear and rage into it, and the floodgates opened. "Fuego!" he yelled. Sparks flew around him as soulfire and uncontrolled magical energy poured from his hands.

The fact that Sara was already kneeling on the ground probably saved her life; everything in the room above the level of Lance's hands was quickly being incinerated in a merciless inferno of soulfire...especially the three assassins, whose bodies were reduced to piles of bone and ash in a matter of seconds.

It was *all* over in less than a minute. Sara pushed herself unsteadily to her feet, coughing as she faced the smoke and heat of the inferno now blazing around her. There was only one thing that she could think about. "Dad!" she yelled, hoping that her father would answer her back and help her out of there. No such luck; her father had collapsed where he stood, in the epicenter of the firestorm. The firestorm that he had created...

An arrow flew over her head, lodging itself in a wooden support pylon. Oliver flew into the room on a zip line, dropping into the room less than a foot from Sara's position. "Sara!" he yelled out over the roaring firestorm around them. "Are you okay?! I saw the explosion..."

Sara cut him off, her mind still focused on the only objective left to her. "My dad collapsed," she told him. "Help me get him out of here..."

Oliver nodded and picked up the older man in a fireman's carry. "What happened?" he asked Sara as they ran for the stairs.

"No idea," she replied, stealing one last glance back at her father before focusing on their escape. _I wish to hell I had one, though..._

#

Quentin Lance woke up on a sofa in an unfamiliar apartment with a dry mouth and a pounding headache. By the light of the full moon pouring through the window, he tried to get a bearing on his surroundings...and failed. He had no clue where the hell he was. He did, however, know exactly *why* he was feeling the way he was. And everything that meant, both for his future and the future of his family.

"Dad?"

Lance looked up to find his daughter standing in the entrance to an opened, darkened doorway that, he presumed, led to someone's bedroom. "Hey pumpkin," he replied, not surprised to hear how raspy and weak his voice sounded. "You okay?"

"I'll be fine," she told him, determined to not let the conversation focus on her injuries. Not when she had so many questions that needed answers. "Are *you* okay?"

"Water," he replied weakly.

Sara crossed the darkened living room to a kitchen alcove, pulled a glass from the cupboard and filled it with water, then brought it to Lance and placed it in his hand before sitting down on the small patch of floor next to the couch.

Lance downed the glass of water in one long gulp, then Sara took the empty glass from his hand and put it down on the nearby coffee table. "Thanks," he told Sara, his voice growing in strength with every passing moment.

"You're welcome," said Sara.

"Where are we?" Lance asked his daughter after trying and failing to place his surroundings as belonging to any location he was already familiar with.

"We're at Felicity's place," Sara replied. "After...everything that happened...I figured a hospital might not be the best place for *either* of us to go..."

Lance pushed himself up until he was sitting upright, wincing as his overtaxed muscles protested every movement. "You're probably right about that," he admitted. "Does she know we're here? Is that...is that why we're sitting in the dark?"

Sara shook her head. "She knows. But for some reason she hasn't been able to to get a single light to turn on since we've been here. She went out to get some lightbulbs and find out if it's just her place or some sort of blackout..."

"It's just here," Lance declared with solemn confidence. "Everything will go back to normal once I...once I leave. But she shouldn't try to turn on any of those fancy computers of hers. If she wants to keep them, that is."

Sara frowned in confusion, unsure as to why her father would be so sure of the cause of Felicity's electrical problems...she then swallowed nervously as she realized that his confidence must have something to do with the 'elephant in the room.' "Dad..." she asked cautiously, unsure of exactly how to proceed, "what the hell happened back there?"

Lance cupped Sara's cheek in his hand; his expression overflowed with all the love he felt for his daughter...and all the regret he felt for the pain he knew he was about to cause her. "I couldn't let him hurt you, sweetheart," he admitted, choking back tears as he spoke. "I couldn't lose you again."

Sara turned her cheek to kiss her father's hand, out of respect for the love in his words. "That's not what I'm asking, and you know it."

"I know," Lance admitted with a weary sigh. He turned away from his daughter, staring out the window at the full moon as he tried to form the words to a conversation he had hoped and prayed he would never, ever have to have. "Sweetheart...you're not the only one in this family who carries the burden of big secrets." He turned to face the confusion he expected to see in his daughter's expression, and traced the length of her arms until he was able to take her hands into his own. "Sara...my real name isn't Quentin Lance. It's an alias I made up about a year before I met your mother."

That was probably the last thing that Sara had expected to hear. "Dad?" she asked, concern and fear slowly creeping into her shaking voice.

"My name...my real name is Harry Dresden, sweetheart," Lance admitted. "I'm a wizard."

The word seemed to hit Sara like an emotional sucker punch. Her jaw dropped open as she stared at her father in disbelief. She wished she could discount her father's words as the rantings of a crazy man or evidence that he had hit his head when he fell. But she couldn't. Because when she weighed her father's admission against the evidence of what she had seen, it was the only thing that made any *sense*. "A *wizard*?" she repeated.

Harry nodded. "I stopped practicing magic because I didn't want to be a part of that world anymore. The price..." his voice trailed off for a moment as memories of his old life forced him to choke back a sob. "The price for being a part of that world was just too damn high. So I quit. Cold turkey. Changed my identity so no one from my old life could find me and moved to Starling City. I wasn't sure if I could even practice magic anymore," Harry admitted with a half-hearted attempt at a chuckle.

"Until tonight," said Sara.

Harry nodded solemnly. "Unfortunately, sweetheart, that little fireworks display I set off back at the tower now means that I'm back on the magical radar in a big way."

"What does that mean?" asked Sara.

Harry sighed again. "I was a massive magnet for trouble in my old life, honey. And now that twenty-five years of that trouble has built up in my absence, I'm guessing the shit-storm that's headed our way is going to make the League of Assassins look like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles."

#

**_Comments, as always, most welcome!_**


	2. Chapter 2

Harry woke up early the next morning. Far too early for his liking. But when the bright rays of the sun hit you right between the eyes as you were curled up awkwardly on someone else's couch...well, it would have been hard for *anyone* to get some sleep. Harry twisted his head, groaning as he realized the awkward position his neck had slept in was going to bother him for the rest of the day. As he rubbed the protesting muscles, his eyes adjusted to the light, allowing him to fully take in his surroundings for the first time.

It all came back to him in a rush. Where he was. Who he was with. Why he was there. And *everything* that had happened the previous night.

_Aw, hell's bells..._

Sara was standing at the door, holding it ajar and blocking it to keep whoever was at the door from coming in. Harry wondered who could possibly be trying to see Felicity this early in the morning...until he recognized the voice of exactly *who* was at the door. Oliver Queen wasn't shocked at the sight of his long-lost daughter. It sounded...it sounded like they were arguing about something. And it was in that moment that *everything* clicked into place.

Sara was the girl in the mask.  
The girl in the mask had been seen fighting side-by-side with the Arrow.  
Felicity Smoak was a known associate of the Arrow.  
Sara had told almost no one that she was alive for fear they would become targets of the League of Assassins.  
But Felicity and Queen *both* knew that Sara was alive. Even though he was *sure* Felicity had not know Sara before her return to Starling City.  
Which could only mean one thing.

"Sara," Harry called out to his daugher. "Let Queen in before you guys get loud enough to wake up the rest of the damn building."

Sara's entire countenance seemed to sink when she realized that her father was awake and recognized who was at the door. Still, his stubborn daughter seemed to be reluctant to obey his wishes. "Are you *sure*, dad?" she asked even as she still blocked the door.

"Yeah," Harry replied solemnly. "He needs to have a better idea of what he's probably going to be going up against."

Sara sighed, reluctantly stepping back to let Oliver Queen enter the room. He walked through the door tentatively, seemingly unsure as to how he should be handling the situation. "Off-Officer Lance," he finally stammered out, settling, apparently, on feigning surprise. "I...I didn't realize you were going to be here..."

"Queen," Harry countered, cutting Oliver off before he had a chance to make himself look *too* foolish. "I need you to do me a favor. It's important."

Oliver blinked back his surprise, shaking his head slightly as he tried to get his bearings in the conversation. "What do you need?"

"No more of this BS between us. All cards on the table, right now. 'Cause if even a tenth of the crap I think could be headed to this city is really coming this way, then there's only one person who's got a prayer of doing what needs to be done to save this city."

Oliver's face fell. "Are you talking about the vigilante?"

_Stars and stones, _thought Harry, fighting the urge to roll his eyes. _Apparently I'm going to have to break down those damn walls myself. Three words should do the job..._ "Not you. Me."

Oliver's entire countenance seemed to change before Harry's eyes. In an instant every movement and gesture that gave Harry the impression that he was talking to Oliver Queen, billionaire playboy...fell away. In its place sat a man that reminded Harry a little of the icy demeanor of his old ally Kincaid. "How long have you known?" asked Oliver.

"About two minutes, to be honest," Harry admitted. "If you hadn't come by..."

"I...we...figured out last night that Al-Owal was targeting you," Oliver explained, knowing that Lance knew he had a team behind him. "I was headed to the tower last night when it exploded."

"He helped me get you out of there and bring you here," Sara chimed in, helping to fill in one of the gaps from when Harry had lost consciousness.

Harry stared out the window for a minute before realizing that there was a curtain next to him that he could pull. "I guess a thank you is in order then," he told Oliver quietly as he pulled the curtain closed to lessen the impact of the morning light in the room.

Oliver blew off the expression of gratitude. "I just stopped by this morning to see if you were okay," he admitted. "When Sara said she didn't want to take you to a hospital, I was worried..."

Harry shook his head. "No, she was absolutely right. A hospital is probably one of the worst places for me to be right now."

"Why?" asked Oliver.

"'Cause I'd probably short out somebody's life support and kill the poor bastard..." Harry muttered under his breath. He then remembered how heated the conversation was getting between Queen and his daughter before he broke it up. "Is that what you two were fighting about over there?" he asked Sara. "Whether or not I should go to the hospital?" The shared look on the faces of both Sara and Oliver told Harry exactly how off-base his question had been. "No?"

Oliver hesitated for just a moment before admitting what they had been arguing about. "Your daughter and I have a...difference of opinion," he explained. "About Laurel."

Sara added, "Ollie thinks I should tell her I'm alive..."

"No!" Harry exclaimed with enough force that Oliver seemed surprised by his vehemence. "Laurel's going through more than enough right now without having to deal with...all of this..." His eyes widened as a thought rose to the forefront of his mind. "Unless...unless Laurel already knows about *you*?" he suggested, turning to Oliver.

Oliver shook his head. "You don't think she would have hesitated to throw me in a jail cell by now if she did?" he insisted.

"Good point," Harry agreed, knowing that was exactly what his daughter would have done. "So she doesn't know?" When Oliver shook his head a second time, Harry re-stated his own point for emphasis. "Then she *can't* know. Between you and Sara and me, on top of everything else she's gone through lately...she'd probably end up with a permanent home in the loony bin within a week."

Oliver picked up on something that Lance had been repeating throughout their conversation. "You keep mentioning that *you're* the key to saving the city from what's coming. Mind telling me why?"

Harry turned to his daughter without giving Oliver an answer to his question. "Did Felicity get some candles last night when she went out to get lightbulbs?"

"Yeah," Sara replied. "Why?"

"Bring 'em," Harry told his daughter. "As many as she bought. Something to stand them up in, too."

Sara swallowed hard as the request dragged her memories of the previous night to the forefront to her mind. "Are we going to need a fire extinguisher?" she asked nervously.

Harry closed his eyes for a moment, reaching into the core of his being to see if he could feel the power he had felt the previous night. To his surprise, the magic was right there, waiting for him. Just like it always had been...in his other life. "I don't think so," he told Sara. "But if she's got one, it probably wouldn't hurt to keep it handy." Sara took the pack of emergency candles, then found a set of drinking glasses and stood one candle up in each glass.

Oliver watched Sara set up the demonstration that Lance requested with a growing sense of confusion. "What's going on, Mr. Lance? I don't under..."

"Shhh!" exclaimed Harry, cutting Oliver off. In deference to his complete lack of practice, he calmed and centered himself...not wanting to destroy Felicity's apartment because he failed to take proper precautions. He then focused all of his attention on the candles. "Flickum bickus..." he whispered.

The wicks of a dozen candles burst into life simultaneously. Oliver gasped briefly, startled only for an instant. "Nice trick, Mr. Lance," he commented. "How'd you do it?"

Sara answered Oliver's question on her father's behalf. "There was no explosion last night, Ollie. My dad...my dad kind of...torched the place."

Oliver's mouth dropped open as he remembered the power of the explosion he had witnessed and the intensity of the inferno that he had helped Sara and her father escape from. The idea that Lance, somehow, had been the *cause* of what he had seen... "Mr. Lance, what's going on here?"

Harry's reply was simple and direct. "My real name isn't Quentin Lance, Oliver. It's Harry Dresden. I'm a wizard. And what happened last night...what happened last night is going to take the dangers in this city and push them to a *whole* new level of bad. We *really* need to talk."

Oliver stared into the flickering flames of the candles on the coffee table, his mind trying to process what he had seen and combine the experience with his memories of what he had seen the previous night. "All cards on the table?" he asked Lance...Harry. "No more lies, no more secrets? From either of us?" Harry nodded in agreement.

"So start talking."


	3. Chapter 3

Karrin Murphy looked in the mirror and sighed wearily. Never in her life had she felt quite so old. She ran a comb through her tangled mass of dark hair, wincing when the gray hairs showed up even through the flood of sweat pouring from every pore in her body. _These were supposed to be my golden years_, she thought wistfully. _I'm supposed to be in Florida, in some sort of retirement community playing shuffleboard and lounging by the pool..._

At least, that *should* have been how this time in her life was supposed to go. But in her youth, Karrin Murphy had had the misfortune to strike up a working relationship with one Harry Dresden, private investigator and professional wizard. That relationship turned into a friendship. It should have turned into...something more...

But Harry had to go and introduce her to the world of magic. The light, with their White Council and their aloof, nasty, stuck-up attitudes toward the mortal world. The dark, with their utter determination to see said mortal world destroyed and re-made in their own vision of pure, unadulterated evil. And the full range of otherworldly creatures in between. Vampires. Werewolves. Demons. Hell, she had even *dated* a demon for a while.

And then Harry Dresden, Warden of the White Council and the one defense Chicago had from all things that go bump in the night, had to go and die on her. With Harry gone, all nine circles of hell seemed to descend on Chicago at once, and the responsibility of being the one to stand in the gap between hell and the mortal world...fell to her.

She had help, thankfully. Harry had left behind a rag-tag bunch of beings: humans and non-humans, wizards and mortals, all of whom had been helped by Harry in some way during his life and felt some sort of gratitude and loyalty to his cause in return. Financed by a mobster named Gentleman John Marcone who always seemed to have a finger in pies in both the mortal and supernatural realms, they always seemed to be able to keep the dam from breaking. Just barely.

A newspaper on the corner of the desk caught her eye. She pulled the paper out from under the pile of papers that were sitting on top of it. And the headline...reading the headline broke her heart all over again.

"You're looking at the boss' obituary again, aren't you?"

Murphy chuckled when she heard the very familiar edge in the voice of the tall, thin young woman standing in the doorway to her office. "Marcone was a good man," Murphy insisted solemnly. "Despite all evidence to the contrary."

"I know," the young woman agreed.

Seeing the young woman's smile sent a stab of grief and regret through Murphy's heart...as it always did. "Something I can help you with, Mags?"

"I need to book a flight," the young woman replied. "I've...got a new assignment."

Murphy raised a wary eyebrow, knowing what those words always meant when she heard them. Her gaze wandered to Amoracchius, the sword that was the source of the young woman's 'assignments' whenever she got them. "What's the job this time?" she asked 'Mags'. "Do you know?"

"You of all people, after all this time, know better than almost anyone how this works," 'Mags' teased. "I never find out the what until I get there. All I know now is where I need to go."

"And where's that?" asked Murphy.

"Starling City," 'Mags' replied.

The name of Mags' declared destination surprised Murphy...as it always did. "West coast, huh?"

'Mags' nodded. "The name rang a bell, so I did some scouting research..."

"Scouting?" Murphy teased with a chuckle. "You mean you're not just going out there on faith? Your pop would be so *very* disappointed..."

'Mags' took the teasing in stride. "*Anyway*," she continued without responding to Murphy's comments, "the local news out there had a report of a massive explosion at the top of an old clock tower last night. And the couple of Paranetters we've got out there corroborate that the explosion felt like it was caused by someone throwing around *massive* amounts of magical energy."

That got Murphy's attention. "How massive?"

"They're still nursing migraines."

Murphy let out low whistle. "That's a hell of a lot of energy."

'Mags' nodded again in agreement. "It's starting to sound like there's a new player out there."

The familiar pronouncement struck another chord with Murphy. "Any idea who or what this new player might be?"

'Mags' hesitated...which was never something that Murphy took to be a good sign. "I...I've been having dreams with this one," she admitted.

"Dreams?" asked Murphy. "Not visions?"

'Mags' shook her head. "Visions are always of the future. Unless there are Mayan temples in Washington, then these dreams are probably of the past."

Murphy rubbed the bridge of her nose to try and stave off the headache she knew was probably coming. "Mags, you know it's perfectly normal to have flashbacks to traumatic events in your life. God knows I have a collection big enough to last me for your Uncle Thomas' lifetime..."

"But to have flashbacks to when I was *that* little? Now? After all this time? There's got to be a reason."

"There doesn't *have* to be a rhyme or reason to any of this, Mags," countered Murphy. "You of all people know that. God, sometimes you really are just as stubborn as your father..."

Margaret Angelica Mendoza Dresden-Carpenter smiled at the reference. "So how soon can I head to Starling City?"

Murphy picked up her phone and dialed a very familiar number. "You've got your bags packed?" When Maggie countered with a teasing raised eyebrow, Murphy got her answer. "Never mind, of course you do. The plane will be gassed up and waiting for you by the time you get to the airport. You'll call me as soon as you get there?"

Maggie smiled her father's smile. "Don't I always?"

#

"Okay, let me see if I have this straight," Oliver began, trying to sum up the fantastic story he had just heard to make sure he had all the details straight in his head. "Your real name is not Quentin Lance. You were born Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden. And you're a wizard."

Harry nodded. "Got it all straight so far."

"But after your old life in Chicago, for all intents and purposes, blew up in your face, you decided to turn your back on magic and fake your own death."

"Yep," Harry agreed.

Oliver swallowed hard, knowing that his next statement was the one he was having the most trouble believing. "And because you let the magical cat out of the bag last night, you believe that your enemies from your old life are going to come gunning for you."

"That about covers it."

"So who do you think will be coming?" asked Oliver. "And how will we know when they get here?"

Harry leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and leaning forward to show his earnestness. "Things...will get weird."

"Weird how?" asked Felicity.

"Unexplainable deaths are the calling card of most of these guys. If we find a pattern between a bunch of bodies I'll be able to narrow down who we're talking about and what they're after. Unfortunately, homicide and I aren't on the best of terms at the moment..."

"I can probably help with that," Felicity volunteered. She went into her bedroom and came out with a large black metal case...

...that Harry recoiled from like it was carrying the Ebola virus. "Miss Smoak," Harry warned her, "I thought Sara warned you about what magic can do to technology..."

Felicity waved off Harry's concern. "It's okay, Detect, uh, I mean Officer..." her voice trailed off as she realized that Detective Lance's demoted title probably wasn't an appropriate moniker anymore either. "I'm sorry," Felicity apologized, blushing, "but what should I call you now?"

"Might as well call me Harry," Harry shrugged.

"All right...Harry," Felicity complied, trying the name out for size. "This is a toughbook I had specially designed for use in major emergencies."

"Like the earthquake?" asked Sara.

Felicity nodded. "I had it built as part of the modifications to the Arrow's hideout shortly after the quake. Secure satellite connection to the internet and more importantly, a case that has been specially designed to protect against EMPs..."

Oliver's eyes grew wider with every word Felicity used to describe the laptop. "Electromagnetic pulses?" he exclaimed. "Just how much of my money went into this little project?"

Felicity was undeterred by Oliver's questions. "Boss," she replied, "you don't want to know. *Anyway*, the point is that if this computer is reinforced enough that it can stand up to a nuclear weapon..." Her voice trailed off as she paused for the dramatic effect of the computer's startup chime, "then it should be able to stand up to just being around you."

Harry let out a low whistle, growing increasingly impressed by every second the computer was able to function in his presence. "Where were you when I was in Chicago, Miss Smoak..."

"I believe I was in elementary school, Harry," Felicity teased. "And please, call me Felicity." She didn't wait for Harry's response, but instead focused her attention on hacking into the police department database. "All right," she announced to the group, "I think I've got something. In the past month the morgue has been flooded with John Does. Bodies of homeless people who are coming in drugged and and drained of their blood."

Harry's face paled enough that Sara started to wonder if her father was being drained of blood where he sat. He had to stop himself from grabbing the screen to verify the information for himself. "How...how many bodies are we talking about, Felicity?"

Felicity hesitated, disturbed by the panic she was seeing in Harry's expression. "At least six a day are coming in, mostly from the Glades...why?"

Harry ran a hand through what was left of his hair as his mind tried to process the implications of six bodies being fully drained of blood *per day*. "Did they...did they have bite marks on their necks, just below the jugular vein?"

"Yeah," Felicity replied, her stomach growing a knot when she realized that Harry recognized the kill pattern. "How'd you know?"

Harry responded by jumping up from his spot on the sofa and pacing the length of the living room at least a half-dozen times. But it was Harry's rambling self-talk that was starting to make everyone truly nervous. "It's not...it's not possible. It just can't be them. It *can't* be possible. We got...we got rid of them all. We *had* to have gotten rid of them all..."

Oliver finally decided to be the one to bite the bullet and break into Harry's monologue. "Who is it, Harry? What kind of...thing from your past are we talking about here?"

Harry stopped, and turned his attention back to the other people in the room. What he was about to tell them, he knew, was going to test every bit of their ability to work with him, both in the present and in the future. "Vampires. These John Does are being killed by vampires. And in these numbers...it's not just one or two bloodsuckers we're talking about here. Somewhere in this city, the Red Court has re-surfaced and is building an army."


	4. Chapter 4

Roy Harper yawned as he pulled the trash cans out of Verdant's back door into the alley behind the club. Even after years of a 'night shift' schedule where he would be up all night and fast asleep during the day, 2am was always his toughest time. He figured that it was because it was the time that they closed down the club on most nights. After all the noise and the energy of the club dissipated, it was a rare night when he didn't feel completely drained. _I wonder how Thea does it,_ he thought. _She works so much harder than me and yet it never, ever shows..._

The clang of feet landing on top of the dumpsters startled Roy. He turned to see the hooded figure of the Arrow standing next to the dumpster, shadows obscuring his face so that it could not be seen. "Jesus!" Roy exclaimed, catching his breath from the vigilante's entrance. "You startled me!"

Oliver skipped the idea of an apology, knowing it wasn't the Arrow's 'style', and instead ensured that his voice changer was on before speaking. "I need your help," he told Roy.

That perked up Roy's attention, as it always did. "What do you need?" he asked.

Oliver hesitated for a moment, knowing how unusual anyone might consider his request to be. "I need to know if you're hearing anything on the street about vampires."

Roy shook his head, blinking in disbelief at what he had just been asked. "Excuse me?" he asked, looking for clarification.

"Vampires. I have sources that tell me homeless people are turning up dead, drained of their blood. The killer...the killer is making it look like vampires."

"You mean, like in the movies? Bite on the neck, that type of thing?" When the Arrow nodded, Roy took the opportunity to throw the garbage bags into the dumpster. "Well," he told the Arrow, "I haven't heard anything before this, but I'll ask arou.."

The Arrow was gone. Roy sighed in a futile show of exasperation before throwing the second bag of trash into the dumpster. "Gee, thanks for all your help, Roy," he complained to the empty alleyway, "here's a phone number that you can use to call me instead of me scaring the crap out of you at your job in the middle of the night..."

When Roy came back into the club though...his night went straight to hell. When he had left his girlfriend and boss, Thea Queen, she was contentedly wiping down and re-stocking the bar. But when he came back into the club, she was pale and shaking with pure, unadulterated rage. "God damn you, Roy Harper. God damn you straight to hell..."

"What?!" Roy exclaimed, shocked and dumbfounded by the turn of events. "What could I have possibly done to get you this mad?"

Thea didn't answer the question directly. Instead she pressed the button on a remote control in her hands, and the screens in the club sprang to life. On the screen was footage of the club's back alley, clearly showing him throwing out the trash...

...and talking to the Arrow.

"You've been talking to the vigilante?!" Thea exclaimed. "For how long?"

"I haven't been talking to him!" Roy countered. "He...he...he startled me in the alley and demanded..."

Thea rolled her eyes, clearly annoyed at Roy's response. It was obvious that she wasn't buying it. "Don't give me that crap. I've been suspecting something for months, that's why I bought the damn cameras in the first place. I figured you were making out with one of the waitresses or something behind my back, but this?! How long have you been talking to him?"

"Thea..."

"How. Long."

Roy sighed, knowing that he wasn't going to get out of the conversation without giving Thea a straight answer. "A few months."

"What do you two talk about, hmm?" asked Thea. "You looked pretty friendly on that tape there. You two talk about sports?"

Roy suddenly seemed to find a spot on the bar completely fascinating. "I've been helping him. Getting him intel about the Glades."

Thea's eyes went wide as she did the chronological and philosophical math. "When we got back together, and you said you weren't going to go off and try to be a hero anymore, that wasn't *really* because of me, was it? It was because you started working for *him*!" Roy's nod steeled Thea's resolve for what she was about to do next. "Get out."

Roy refused to give up on the best relationship he'd ever had that easily. "Thea..."

"You just don't get it, do you?" Thea insisted. "I get that the vigilante goes after the bad guys. I'm even kinda glad that there's somebody out there that these creeps are so scared of..."

Roy crossed the room to get as close to Thea as he could, cupping her face in his hands, praying that he could figure out something, *anything*, that might change her mind. "Thea, that's..."

Thea swatted his hands away. "See, that's what you don't seem to understand! Everything about the vigilante is...is violence, and hate, and fear, and *death*. If you're *working* for him, it's no different than if you were the one going out and trying to beat up the bad guys yourself."

Roy's heart sank as he realized that this was quickly going to dissolve into their long-standing argument. "Thea..." he whispered, his heart breaking as he said her name.

"I'll mail you your last check," Thea responded coolly before turning on her heels and walking back to her office, leaving Roy alone in the nightclub with his face staring back at him from the monitors...wondering how his life could have fallen apart in mere minutes.

#

Some days Oliver Queen just couldn't believe the odd twists and turns that occurred along the path that was his life. A year prior to that moment, Oliver had been trying to re-adjust to his life back in Starling City after having been on the island for five years, Sara Lance was still missing and presumed dead, and Quentin Lance wanted nothing more than to discover that Oliver was the 'Starling City Vigilante' and have him put in jail for the rest of his life. _But today..._

"Oliver, you don't have to do this, I can just go back to my apartment..."

"Where you're likely to blackout an entire city block if the League of Assassins don't get to you first? Mr. Lance..."

Harry rolled his eyes. "Look, call me Quentin or call me Harry, but at this point, don't you think we're past the whole polite last name thing?"

Oliver chuckled as he opened the door, recognizing that that was the argument he was least likely to win right now. "All right...Thea!" His mind blanked as the surprise of seeing his sister in the family living room was starting to sink in. "What are you doing here? I thought you'd be at Roy's..."

"Roy and I broke up," Thea replied. It was clear that she was still more mad than upset about the development. Thea quickly frowned, though, when she realized when Oliver was getting home...and who had come home with him. "Officer Lance?" she asked, turning her attention to the policeman. "What did my brother do now?"

Oliver opened his mouth to start coming up with an excuse...but Lance beat him to the punch. "Your brother got toasted at dinner and started singing Lady GaGa tunes in the middle of the restaurant. A couple of uniforms locked him up to sleep it off in the drunk tank and when I found out about it I offered to give him a lift home."

"Well, thank you," Thea said warmly. "That was very nice of you, especially considering the history you two have..."

Lance and Oliver shared a look of unspoken communication that was lost on Thea. "Yeah, well..." he countered, trying to blow off Thea's expression of gratitude before backing away toward the door, "I...I probably should head back. Gotta...gotta get 'back on the beat', ya know."

"Of course," Thea agreed, walking with Lance back toward the door. Oliver frowned behind them, wondering exactly what Harry was thinking...until the wizard laced his hands behind his back and flashed three fingers at him. "Thank you again, Officer Lance. I'm sorry that my brother is continuing to find more new and creative ways to be a pain in your ass."

"Yeah, well..." said Lance, leveling the teasing directly at Oliver as he was standing behind Thea, "one day I'm sure your brother will find a way to put those 'creative' talents of his to good use."

Oliver smirked behind his sister as she closed the door between her and Lance, then flipped his expression as his sister turned around. "Are you okay, Thea?" he asked, showing his sincere concern for his sister's situation.

Thea nodded...before breaking down in tears. Oliver wrapped his arms around his sister and let her sob into his chest. "I really love him, you know?"

"I know," Oliver sympathized, tightening his embrace around his sister.

A gentle breeze blew into the entryway, opening the front door behind them. Thea and Oliver both noticed the breeze immediately. "Sorry," she apolgized, wiping away tears, "I must not have closed the door all the way..."

"I'll take care of it," Oliver volunteered, pulling away from his sister's embrace to wipe the tears from her eyes. "Why don't you go get a cup of coffee in the kitchen? You had a rough night last night, I'll bet you could use it."

"Definitely," Thea agreed.

Oliver watched his sister as she turned into the kitchen before changing the focus of his attention. "Harry," he called out in a low, harsh whisper. "That you?"

The disembodied growl that erupted next to Oliver was surprising in the fact that it wasn't surprising him. "Yeah," Harry said, "sounded like you needed to change the plan on the fly."

"You thought right," Oliver agreed. "How are you doing this?"

"It's called a veil," explained Harry. "Not one of my better spells. I'm usually better with stuff that's just raw power."

"Like torching the clock tower?"

Harry nodded before remembering that Oliver couldn't see him. "Yeah. Veils take a little more...finesse. Nice to see I still got it."


	5. Chapter 5

"She doesn't know, does she?"

There hadn't been much conversation between Harry and Oliver as they walked. Harry had to put all of his concentration into maintaining the veil. Oliver seemed to be putting all of his concentration into making sure that his sister wasn't following them. It didn't leave much room for talking about the weather. But now that they seemed to be a safe distance away from the main kitchen and living room areas, Oliver had relaxed slightly, so Harry decided to end the veil spell and chance the question. "About you?"

"Who?" asked Oliver, unsure of which 'she' Harry would be talking about.

"Thea. She doesn't know about your other career, does she?"

"No," Oliver insisted, with a little more vehemence than the quiet conversation called for. "And I'd like to keep it that way."

Harry held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. If anyone understood the importance of keeping secrets, it was Harry Dresden. "You'll get no argument from me there, pal." The pair stopped in what, to Harry, felt like it had to be the last possible place to stop. "So what is this place?"

"It was my dad's old study," Oliver explained. "He moved it closer to the center of the house a few years before he died, but I remember he used to disappear down here for hours when I was a kid..." His voice trailed off; Oliver's face clearly showed his disappointment as he thought about exactly what might have transpired in this room during those long hours without his father. He quickly shook off the old ghosts, though, once he found the proper key to fit into the old wooden door. "At any rate, from what Felicity told me it should meet your needs perfectly."

Evidently Felicity knew more about magic than she was letting on. The room looked much like his old lab in Chicago had looked when he first moved in. There were no books, for obvious reasons; it was just an empty room in the basement of the Queen Mansion. But it had tables and a chair and bookshelves, and in the center of the room was a crate full of candles, a spool of thick copper wire...and Felicity's emergency toughbook. He approached the computer cautiously, but was happy to find that not only was the machine still working, but it had full access to the internet, even here. "She's right," said Harry. "It's perfect."

"We're far enough away from the main rooms of the house that the only way anybody should discover that you're down here is if you blow the house up," said Oliver. His tone quickly took the same undercurrent of teasing that Harry's had earlier. "So don't blow it up."

Oliver's teasing brought back memories of his old house in Chicago...and of barely escaping with his life. Thinking of how lost he might get trying to escape such a blaze in *this* house caused a shudder to run down his spine. "No argument from me there, either."

"My sister's going to get suspicious if I don't get back up to her soon," said Oliver, backing away toward the door. "But do you see those little cracks of light at the back of the room?" Harry nodded. "It's a private entrance. You should be able to come and go as you please for the most part. Even accept deliveries if you need to."

"Deliveries?"

"Supplies. Books. Whatever you need to...do what you do. Again."

Harry rolled his eyes. "What I *meant* was, that all costs a lot of money, and on a cop's salary..."

Oliver smiled, appreciating the fact that the former Detective Lance would have no clue about the finer points of what it took to have a double life. "I have a secret account for anything that my...other career requires. Felicity can help you get whatever you need."

Harry tapped at a few keys on the laptop, shaking his head in amazement that the thing was having no problems functioning in his presence. He caught the other man just as he was about to close the door behind him. "Oliver," said Harry, "thank you...for everything."

"From what you've told me, we've barely just gotten started," Oliver countered. "So thank me later."

Harry watched the door close behind Oliver, then used the light coming from the laptop screen to wrestle open the crate of candles and spread them across the room. A whisper of "flickum bickus" bathed the empty room in warm, glowing light. Harry then sat down in front of the laptop...and his mind went blank. Wizards used books and paper because they *couldn't* use technology. It sputtered out and died whenever they got near it. So how the hell was he supposed to get up to speed when he had no idea whether anything he needed was actually online?

A video chat window popped up. Felicity's face smilled back at him. "Hi, Off...Harry."

"Felicity?" he asked. The background of the room that the woman was in wasn't one he recognized. It sure as hell wasn't her tiny apartment. "Where are you?"

"Oliver's hideout," she replied.

It never really occured to Harry that the Arrow would have a secret hideout. Once he figured out that Oliver Queen really was the Arrow, he just assumed Oliver worked out of his obnoxiously large McMansion. "Where is that, anyway?"

Felicity's smile widened just slightly as she realized which fragments of information Harry was trying to put together. "I'm in a basement too. But it's not the house, it's the nightclub."

_Verdant_. The booming energy of the nightclub over their heads would be the perfect cover for whatever the Arrow needed to do. Oliver Queen was most definitely smarter than he had ever given the kid credit for. _Although_... "doesn't Thea run that club for him now?"

"Yeah," Felicity replied.

"And she still doesn't know what you guys do down there?"

"Not so far..." Felicity decided to change the subject and bring them back to the more pressing business at hand. "Anyway, I remember you told me earlier that wizards can't use computers. But since that's all you've got right now, I figured you might need me to walk you through some things. The toughbook's networked to the computers at the hideout, so I can send you any information you need from here if you can't get to it yourself."

A spark of an idea came to life in Harry's mind. "Anything?"

"Anything," Felicity nodded.

_God, I wonder if they're still around,_ thought Harry. It was the only way he could connect 'magic' and 'Internet' in the same sentence and still come up with something that might actually help them. "Okay, I need you to find a group called the Paranet and hack into it for me..."

#

Roy Harper was moping. And he knew it. _I just want to do some good in the world,_ he lamented to himself, _why does it have to be so damn hard?!_ He understood Thea's perspective, he really did. She had lost so many people in her life, and while she had miraculously gotten her brother back, it didn't make up for the fact that her father was dead and her mother was in prison, probably for the rest of her life...if she was lucky. To him, it made total sense that Thea would want to shield herself from going through that kind of pain again. And yet...there were so many people who were *going* through that kind of pain. Over and over again. He had gone through it. He had also caused it...until the Arrow saved his life and he (and Thea) had helped him to turn his life around and get back on the right path. He just wanted to help, couln't she see that?

It would help to talk about it, he knew. He also knew he wasn't the 'sit-on-the-couch and talk about it' type.

Luckily for him, there was a place where he didn't have to be.

Roy turned the corner and passed the hulking skeleton of the burnt-out, abandoned car, knowing that right after he stepped over that crack in the pavement...

"Really?! AGAIN?!"

_Sometimes it pays to know someone who can read your mind_, Roy thought with a half-hearted chuckle. He leaned on the railing to the staircase, waiting patiently for his friend to let him enter her mobile home. He didn't announce his presence. He didn't need to.

"Goddamn it Roy Harper," the old blind woman cursed at him as she opened the door. "You know how much I hate it when yaw lean like dat on da railing! One day dat railing's gonna break when yaw lean on it and yaw gonna break ya damn neck..."

"Hi Aunt Nadine," Roy greeted the woman with a warm smile, taking her chastising in stride. Once he was safely in the small home, he gently touched her elbow to telegraph his location before kissing her on the cheek. "How you been?"

"Betta 'n you, I 'magine," Nadine replied. "You and Thea broke up again, huh? Over dat Arrow boy?"

Roy nodded, knowing that even though the woman couldn't see his answer, she knew it anyway. "She doesn't want to lose anyone else in her life, I get that. But why can't she get..."

"Dat you gots a debt to de Arrow 'cause he saved yaw life and helpin' him is yaw way a' payin' off dat debt? I know, sweetie, I know." Aunt Nadine patted his shoulder in a show of sympathy. "C'mon. I jus' made a batch a' dose oatmeal cookies ya so fond of, an' dey's still warm."

Roy let Aunt Nadie lead him to a raggedy old stool next to the kitchen counter and the rack of chocolate chip oatmeal cookies cooling next to it. "Thank you, Aunt Nadine," he said through a mouthful of cookie.

Nadine's smile spoke of her love for the man she had known since he was a small, troubled boy. "Yaw welcome, baby," she told him, pinching his cheek as she spoke.

"Miss Nadine?" a woman's voice called out from the small mobile home's back bedroom. "Where do you keep your tow..."

Roy jumped off his stool when the woman entered the kitchen, entering instantly into a defensive posture. Nadine cut Roy off, though, before he had a chance to embarrass himself. "Mind yo manners, boy! Maggie is a guest and a friend and you will treat her as such, y'hear?"

"Yes, ma'am," Roy replied quietly.

When Maggie came in wearing a bathrobe, she blushed as she realized that that Nadine had another guest. A *male* guest. "I'm so sorry, Miss Nadine," she apologized, "I didn't realize you had a visitor. If you'll just point me to a towel I can use to dry my hair..."

Nadine blew off the apology. "Truth is da Good Lawd musta brought you two here together so I didn't hav'ta repeat myself. Tell da girl ya name, Roy, an' den go git her a towel for her hair."

Roy swallowed the last of her cookie and offered his hand. "Roy Harper," he introduced himself.

"Maggie Carpenter. Pleasure to meet you, Roy." She shook Roy's offered hand, then watched him head toward the back of the house before turning her attention completely to Nadine. "Miss Nadine," she asked politely, "does Roy...?"

"He know 'bout me an' my gift but not 'bout da 'Net," Nadine replied, knowing that was the information that Maggie required.

"Got it," said Maggie. "Thank you."

Roy came back into the room holding a threadbare white towel. "Here you go, Maggie."

"Thanks," said Maggie, taking the towel with a smile.

"Maggie's da little girl of a friend a'mine from Chicago," Nadine told Roy. "She came here because she's lookin' inta somma da' weird stuff goin' on in da Glades, like you an' ya friend."

"Oh?" Maggie asked, curious about the reference to the third person. "Who's your friend?"

Roy ignored the question. "What did you find, Aunt Nadine?"

"I been hearing about dis new club a couple blocks from here. 'Dey been sellin' dis new drug called 'The Kiss'..."

Maggie's eyes widened as the drug's name registered with some of her oldest memories. "Did you just say 'The Kiss'?"

"Yeah," agrred Nadine. "Da thoughts I hear goin' round say 'dat as soon as ya get hooked on da stuff, you neva' seen again."

Maggie sunk backwards in her chair, stunned into shock by the information she had just been given in her present and the connection that news had to her past. Roy, though, was far more curious than disturbed. "What about the murders?" he asked. "I had been hearing they were homeless people..."

Nadine blew off Roy's 'information'. "'Dey just sayin' dis 'cause 'da bodies are people from 'da Glades and 'dey got no ID on' em. No, da people comin' up dead was all last seen at 'dis club. I's sure of it."

Roy stood up, convinced of what his next move is. "Guess I gotta go check out this club, then..."

"*We* should check out this club," Maggie countered.

Roy hesitated at the idea of putting a complete stranger in danger. "I don't know..."

"Roy Harper," Nadine cancelled out any possibility of debate by giving his adopted 'nephew' a direct order. "If yaw'll gonna go off and do somethin' as crazy as goin' undercover, 'den you *will* have Maggie go wit you. Understand?"

Roy hung his head, imitating the expression of submission he used to use as a child. "Yes, Aunt Nadine..."


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N: **As I wrote out the outline to this story, a question has come up: whether or not to 'save' Laurel. I don't do major character death, but there is a question as to whether or not Laurel will come out of this story in one piece, so to speak. But if she is saved, another character in this story will have to take the major brunt of the consequences...and they are *huge*. Dresden Files fans (if any are reading this) will have probably caught on to what I'm saying at this point, so no spoilers for the Arrow kids :-). So do I save Laurel, or not? There is also a third option: an "alternate ending" where I show both possibilities. I'm kinda liking both ways this story could go, and I would be completely happy writing this story to go either way (or both). Anyway, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Let me know in the comments.

And now, back to our show...

* * *

"Why did you have to come with me?"

It took Roy a moment to catch Maggie's attention, lost as she was in her own thoughts. "Hmmm?"

"Not that I don't mind the company," inisisted Roy, "but Aunt Nadine was *really* insistent that you come with me. Why?"

The sounds of vicious fighting stopped Maggie from answering Roy's question. Roy and Maggie ran around the corner to find a blond-haired young woman surrounded by three men in dark, dangerous-looking martial arts gear. The woman had impressive fighting skills and wasn't afraid to show them.

"What do you think?" asked Maggie.

"She's good," Roy replied, "but three against one versus three against three?"

"I thought so, too," agreed Maggie.

Roy and Maggie sprinted toward the fight at top speed, getting to the girl and covering her back to back to back. Roy had to keep the shock from showing up on his face as Maggie pulled an impressive-looking English broadsword from seemingly out of nowhere. "I'm only going to say this once," Maggie declared, taking over the fight with what felt, to Roy, to be an expression of sheer power and control coming from years of experience. "If you gentlemen put down your weapons and walk away *now*, God will forgive you and this whole terrible incident will not be held against you." Roy, the girl and the three men all stared at Maggie in shameless confusion for the briefest of moments, no one moving an inch from their defensive positions. Seeing that her announcement had gotten exactly nowhere, Maggie simply shrugged. "Had to make the offer..."

The three men resumed their attack. This time, though, *they* were hopelessly outgunned. Roy was clearly way out of his league; while he tried to get a few blind swings at his opponent, he was on his back in a matter of seconds. And while the girl seemed to be back to holding her own, Maggie was filling in the gaps of all three battles at once. She was a blur of strength and skill, taking on all three fighters at once and bringing them to prone positions of surrender within seconds.

The girl stared at Maggie with an expression of awe. "I thought I was dead," she exclaimed. "How did you *do* that?"

"God put me in the right place at the right time," Maggie replied with a shrug before sliding her sword into the holster down the center of her back and fluffing out her hair so that the hilt disappeared cleanly behind it. The three fighters scrambled away, scraping a few yards across the gravel before getting up on their feet and taking off into the night. The three survivors watched their opponents sprint away, then turned around and walked off in the opposite direction, chuckling when they realized that they were all going the same way. "Where are you headed?" asked Maggie.

"I'd heard about this hot new club that's just a couple blocks from here. Beso Rojo?" When Roy and Maggie nodded in acknowledgement that they, too, were familiar with the name, the young woman continued, "anyway, I was thinking I'd go and check the place out."

Roy and Maggie carefully kept their expressions casual. "Actually, we were headed that way too," Roy suggested. "Maybe we should go together?"

The girl nodded her agreement. "Sounds great."

Maggie was the first one to offer a hand to the girl in greeting. "Maggie Carpenter," she introduced herself before adding her new friend. "And this is my friend Roy Harper."

"I'm Sara," the girl responded as she shook Maggie's offered hand. "Sara...Ivo."

Roy stared at Sara for a moment, carefully studying her features. "Have I...have we ever met before?"

Sara had to fight to keep her expression neutral as she shrugged off the question. "I don't think so."

#

Beso Rojo felt like your average underground club, in a lot of ways. Carved out of an old factory space, the place was dark and dingy, lit with cans of red lighting hanging from above with explosed cables. But the drinks were passable, the music was good, and the vibe...

The vibe was like nothing Starling City had ever seen. And that was why the the club was 'the' hot new place to go. The place seemed to reek of sex, and edge, and forbidden danger. It was like...walking through the Glades at night, but with no chance of being hurt, good drinks and cool music.

_Or so they think._..thought Maggie. She had seen places like this before. A lot of places. Clean it up a little (and stick a hotel on top of it) and it could have been a White Court nightclub back in Chicago. But this place...the vibe combined with the whole underground rave scene and the reputation for pushing the newest hot club drug...in her mind, that all added up to only one thing: Beso Rojo was a Red Court nest. A *big* one.

The years following the death of their king had not been kind to the Red Court. They had devolved into the vampire equivalent of the "Dark Ages": banding together in small groups and pooling just enough of their resources together to survive. Usually they would just take the veil of a street gang that caused homeless people in bad neighborhoods to 'disappear'. In Los Angeles they were able to cobble enough resources to create a snuff film company that fed on hookers. But never, in the wildest dreams of most of the Red Court survivors, could they have come up with the cash to create a base of operations like this. This...this was almost like the old days...which was a thought that could scare Maggie like nothing else in the world.

Maggie's focus shifted back to the present when she realized that Roy had ordered them drinks. She tripped and fell into Roy...causing both of their drinks to fall to the dirt floor and empty out their contents.

Roy caught Maggie in his arms, surprised by the sudden bout of 'clumsiness' in the woman he had just seen fight...well, fight *better* than the Arrow, if he was completely honest with himself. "Are you o..."

"Don't eat or drink *anything* while we're here," Maggie ordered into Roy's ear. "It's probably all laced with the drug."

"Got it," Roy agreed immediately, taking Maggie at her word. "Should we warn Sara, then, too?"

The pair scanned the club, looking for their new friend who has split up from them as soon as she got past the bouncer. Maggie spotted her first. "Middle of the dance floor. Good place to do recon, actually," she commented.

If Roy hadn't been *right* by Maggie's side, he would never have been able to hear her over the pounding beat of the music. "Should we try to hook up with her out there?" asked Roy.

"Definitely," Maggie agreed.

Roy and Maggie danced their way into the center of the room just as the beat of the music turned slower and more sensual. Sara slipped into the groove with the pair, joining them in their examination of their surroundings. "What am I looking for?" Roy asked Maggie.

"Super pretty people," Maggie replied. "Not just the usual club goers. People you're drawn too, even if you can't explain why."

Roy moved around the floor, trying to scan the room without looking like he was scanning the room. When he trusted his gut instincts and followed his new friend's directions, the results scared the crap out of him. "Maggie..." he declared, "they're everywhere..."

Maggie tried to ignore the sinking feeling in her own stomach. "Yeah, that's what I get, too," she agreed.

"Are they..."

"Yeah," said Maggie with deathly sincerity, finishing Roy's question before he asked it. "You believe me?"

"Yeah," Roy replied, his eyes never leaving the face of a supermodel-looking blond at the end of the bar who was talking up a fairly average-looking guy. The guy seemed to be basking in the fact that the woman was talking to him at all...but Roy recognized the look on the woman's face immediately. She wasn't looking at her drinking companion like he was a guy she could have a relationship with, or even a guy that she could 'hook up' with for the night.

She was looking at him like he was dinner. "We need to get out of here, right?" Roy asked Maggie.

"Sooner the better," Maggie agreed.

Roy took Maggie's hand, and the pair fell into an easy 'fake' affection, trying and succeeding at taking on the appearance of a couple that had simply found each other on the dance floor and was leaving for the night together.

#

Sara eavesdropped on Roy and Maggie's conversation, only half surprised to hear that her 'rescuer' wasn't just at the club to enjoy herself. She watched the pair survey the area, impressed at how well Maggie had surveyed her surroundings in just a few moments...although Sara suspected that Maggie wasn't surveying her surroundings as much as she was evaluating how well Roy was surveying *his* surroundings. Maggie Carpenter had the demeanor of a seasoned and skilled warrior, and the skills to match. A dangerous new player had just entered the game in Starling City...

...and she wasn't the only one. Sara noticed him, out of the corner of her eye, as she made her way off the dance floor. She didn't do anything so foolish as to try to disappear out of the room; she knew he was far, far too smart not to know every move she was making. But she also knew that he couldn't risk coming after her in such a public space, either, which meant that as long as she *stayed* in public, she was safe for the moment.

Sara carefully made her way off the dance floor, sliding around couples and through the crowd until she made her way past the bouncer and out the door. She cut to the front of the taxi stand line right next to the 'velvet rope' line at the club's entrance. The move annoyed the heavily intoxicated patrons at the front of the line; it was meant to. Once Sara was convince that her fat, bald, and old African-American driver was in no way connected to the League of Assassins, she gave him instructions to take her to Verdant and pulled out her cell phone. "Ollie? It's me. We've got problems...yeah, more than just 'vampires'. R'as Al-Ghoul was at Beso Rojo tonight...I'm already on my way."

#

Thea Queen stood next to the bar at Beso Rojo, staring at the front door in stunned disbelief. _That rat bastard._..she cursed to herself, her anger growing by the minute. _We just broke up *last night*._ She had come to the nightclub to see why Verdant's revenues were starting to 'slip'. The first rule of the nightclub business, Thea had learned very early on, was that when you stopped being the 'hottest club in town', you were steps away from having to close your doors for good. So when everything she had heard on Twitter had started to be about Beso Rojo and *not* Verdant, she decided to come and pay the place a visit...see what they had that her club didn't.

Apparently, whatever Beso Rojo had was enough to make Roy Harper forget all about her in less than twenty-four hours.

"You look like someone who could really use a drink."

Thea smiled and blushed as she looked up at the disarmingly attractive bartender whose attentions were now focused, to Thea's surprise, exclusively on her. "There's a lot of people around here," she argued.

"I'm a bartender," he insisted with a chuckle, "I make better tips when I help the people who need it first. Bad day?"

An image of Roy and the tall, brunette bimbo on his arm flashed through Thea's mind. "You have no idea..."

"I have the perfect thing to make you forget *all* about it," the bartender replied with a chuckle. "Let me get you one." He poured a dark red liquid into a shot glass and pushed it in her direction.

Thea stared at the small glass, curious as to the unfamiliar liquid. "What is it?"

"It's called a Red Kiss. It was the drink the club was named after. Try that one, and if you don't like it, it's on the house."

Thea picked up the glass, looked at the bartender one last time, then downed the drink in one gulp. She felt the strong burn of alcohol going down, but then she felt...nothing. It was like her insides were growing numb, from her heart down through her toes and out the tips of her fingers. And once her whole body felt numb, she started to feel...great. Really, really great. Like the joy of finding out her brother was alive had come back and was radiating through every cell in her body. Thea examined the empty glass like it had held the source of everything that was good and pure and true in the universe. "You...you must be the bestest bartender in the whole wide world," Thea declared, a little giddy from the effects of the drink.

"Give me a double."

#

**_All comments appreciated!_**


	7. Chapter 7

"I'm sorry, but you're a what?!"

"He's a wizard," Oliver replied, answering Diggle's question.

Diggle shook his head, not at all believing what his friends seemed to be accepting with absolute conviction. "Prove it."

Harry sighed, respecting the fact that the last member of Oliver's team to find out about him would need valid proof, but still annoyed at the idea that he *needed* to deliver it. "All right," he sighed. Centering and focusing himself, Harry closed his eyes, whispered a few words that Diggle couldn't hear...

...and disappeared.

One member of the Arrow's team stared at the place where he had last seen Harry Dresden in awestruck amazement. The other member of Oliver's team, though, cursed Harry in a show of unrestrained annoyance. "Goddamn it, Harry," Felicity exclaimed as every monitor in front of her started to flicker, "next time, warn a girl, would you!"

Harry lifted the veil, showing that he was blushing slightly. "Sorry, Felicity," he apologized, "but he *told* me to prove it!"

Felicity blew out a frustrated sigh, before turning patiently back toward the wizard on the staircase. "Harry, these computers aren't shielded like the toughbook. The *room* itself is shielded. Which means that once you get into this room..."

"Your computers are vulnerable."

"Which is why I told you to sit quietly on the staircase," Felicity concluded. "So watch it next time, okay?"

The conversation between Harry and Felicity seemed to give Diggle just enough time to process what he had seen. "You really are a wizard," he exclaimed, stunned by the small demonstration of Harry's power.

"I really am," Harry agreed.

"And he knows...everything about what we do down here?" Diggle asked Oliver.

"For the most part," Oliver replied calmly.

The idea that 'Officer Lance' was now fully on the Arrow's support team seemed to be the first piece of information that evening that Diggle had been able to accept at face value. "All right, then," he declared.

Sara bounded down the stairs, barely swinging around where her father was sitting before noticing he was there. "Why are you relegated to the penalty box?" she asked her father.

"Potential for massive electrical interference," Harry replied.

"Fair enough," Sara agreed.

Oliver, having been the only one who knew why Sara had come to the hideout, decided to get right down to business. "Sara, would you please let your dad know what you told me earlier."

Sara hesitated, knowing how much her overprotective father was likely to react to the information that she had to tell the group. "Some of my contacts in the Glades gave me a lead that sounded a bit like your description of the Red Court vampires. I was following up on that lead tonight...when I was attacked."

"Attacked?" asked Harry, shock coloring the edges of his voice. "By who?"

"Three more members of the League."

Harry looked like he was about to blow his top. "The League? As in the League of Assassins?"

Sara nodded. "R'as Al-Ghoul has set up shop in the Glades."

Diggle's expression was starting to match Harry's. "R'as Al-Ghoul is in Starling City?"

"Who's R'as Al-Ghoul?" asked Felicity.

"The head of the League," Sara replied. "And if he's here for me, that means he's not leaving until I'm dead."

Harry's expression had progressed from pure shock to a growing protective rage. "Where is he?"

"Dad," Sara warned, "you can't just go charging in against R'as Al-Ghoul. I don't care how powerful you are. Last time you and I went up against three members of the League we both almost died. And tonight *I* almost died. If it hadn't been for..."

"For what?" asked Felicity.

Sara shook her head. "Not what. Who. When I got ambushed tonight, I was rescued."

Oliver's eyes flew wide at the idea that the best fighter he had ever seen even needed to *be* rescued. "By who?"

Sara shrugged. "Some girl. No mask, or anything to shield her identity. She just came in, pulled a sword out of some holster in her back and took out three members of the League practically on her own."

Harry's eyes went wide as his daughter's explanation rang some very familiar bells. "A sword? What kind of a sword?"

Diggle was confused. "That's your take-away from this, Officer...Harry? Your family is under siege from the League of Assassins and you want to know what kind of sword..."

Harry ignored Diggle's comments and focused entirely on his daughter. "Sara, this is important. I can't tell you how important it is. What kind of a sword was this girl packing?"

"A-a broadsword," Sara replied, confused by her father's desperation about the issue. "An old English broadsword."

"And it was like she just showed up out of nowhere?" asked Harry. When Sara nodded, Harry pushed harder. "Did she say anything before she started fighting, by any chance?"

Sara stared at her father in disbelief. "Yeah, she told these guys that God would forgive them if they turned around and walked away from the fight. But how could you possibly know that?"

"A Knight of the Cross," Harry exclaimed, drawing in a sharp breath. "She has to be."

"What's a Knight of the Cross?" asked Sara.

"God's muscle," Harry replied with a chuckle. He then explained, "the Knights of the Cross are three warriors who show up to fight the toughest of enemies that evil can throw at them. That sword of hers? It has one of the nails from the crucifixion in the hilt."

Sara frowned, confused by her father's explanation. "But a sword is only as good as the person who wields it. Maggie..."

Harry suddenly found himself on unsteady legs, and collapsed on the staircase, clearly shocked. "Did you say her name was *Maggie*?"

Sara nodded. "Maggie Carpenter." Sara was growing more and more concerned by the minute as she watched her father's face drain of color. "Dad?"

"Is...is she tall? Dark hair? Dark eyes?"

Sara backed away from her father, unnerved by how spooky his answers were getting. "Yeah, how'd you know? Dad...who is she?" Harry got up and grabbed his daughter's hands with his own, his expression growing wistful and a little sad. Sara couldn't help but notice how her father's hands were shaking. "Dad? After everything that's happened the past couple of days, what haven't you told me?"

Harry caressed his daughter's cheek with his hand as he fought to get enough control of his spiraling emotional state. "Sara," he finally admitted, his voice heavy with the weight of his past, "when I left Chicago, I...left someone there. With the way my life was at the time, I...I couldn't protect her. I couldn't give her a normal life the way I wanted to. The normal life she *deserved* to have. So I left her with my friends Michael and Charity Carpenter to be raised alongside their six children. Honey...Michael was a Knight of the Cross. His sword was Amoracchius. An old English broadsword."

Sara backed further away from Harry. Her face was starting to drain of color and match her father's shocked pallor. "Dad? Dad, what aren't you telling me?"

Harry collapsed back onto the staircase, finally unloading his greatest burden with a weary sigh. "Sara, baby...I'm Maggie's father. She's your half-sister."

* * *

**_Hope you don't mind two in one day again! Comments welcome!_**


	8. Chapter 8

Once Roy and Maggie were clear of the club, the mask of affection between the couple evaporated. Apparently, Roy's good mood evaporated along with it. "Okay, who the hell are you, Maggie?"

"I'm Maggie Carpenter," she replied. "I told you that earlier..."

"That's not what I'm talking about, and you know it! *Normal* girls don't just pull swords off of their backs and send three ninjas running off with their tails between their legs!"

Maggie stopped walking and sighed, rubbing the bridge of her nose in an attempt to massage away the building tension. "I had a feeling that was going to come up," she admitted.

"You're damn right something like that was going to come up!" Roy insisted. "So start talking."

"Not here," Maggie insisted, recognizing that their surroundings were not conducive to giving Roy the answers he was seeking. "Let's get to Miss Nadine's first."

Roy nodded in reluctant agreement, and the pair walked the last few minutes to their mutual friend's mobile home in silence. Nadine was waiting for them when they arrived. "Bad night, miss Maggie?" she asked innocently.

"You could say that," Maggie grumbled. Deciding time was not on her side, Maggie decided to get the easy part out of the way first. She pulled her sword out of its holster and set it on the kitchen counter. "Okay, you want an explanation, so here goes. This is a Sword of the Cross. It's called Amoracchius. Check out the hilt."

Roy tentatively moved toward the counter, only picking up the sword when Maggie nodded, giving her approval for him to do so. When his hand closed over the hilt of the weapon, he felt the sword's most unique characteristic immediately. Roy opened his hand and laid the sword back down on the counter gently before explaining what he had felt. "There's something stuck in the handle of the sword, but I can't figure out what it is."

"Miss Nadine told me she took you to church every Sunday when you were a kid, so can I assume you're familiar with Jesus and how he died?"

Roy nodded. "He was nailed to a cross..." His eyes flew wide as the statement connected with what he had felt between his fingers. "No way..."

Maggie nodded. "What you felt is one of the nails that held Jesus to the cross. The other two are in two other swords that are held by two other people. Together, we are called the Knights of the Cross."

"Knights of the Cross?" Roy repeated, "What, you work for Jesus or something?"

"God, actually," Maggie replied with a shrug. When Roy's eyes flew open in surprise, Maggie clarified, "I can't really explain it...but when I'm holding the sword, especially in battle, I'm no longer expressing my own will. I'm expressing *his*."

Maggie's description of her connection to the sword answered a nagging question in Roy's mind. "That's why you said what you said before you fought those guys tonight? To give them the chance to..."

"Repent," Maggie agreed, filling in the word that Roy seemed to have forgotten from his childhood. "Yeah. Part and parcel of the gig, especially when fighting humans."

"Humans?" Roy's eyes flew even wider as his mind hung on the last word in Maggie's explanation. "You mean...you mean you've fought t-t-t-things that aren't..." Maggie's nod sent Roy's mind reeling. "So those 'people' you pointed out to me in the club tonight? They were really vampires? *Real* vampires?"

Maggie frowned, confused by Roy's question. "I thought you said you believed me earlier?"

"I thought you were using an expression!" Roy exclaimed. He absentmindedly rubbed the front of the base of his neck as he thought about what *could* have happened to him that evening. "You see a hell of a lot of bad people in the Glades. I thought you were going after some of them, kind of like..."

That was the second time Roy had made a reference to his mysterious friend, and it caught Maggie's attention. "Like who?"

Roy's gaze suddenly seemed to be transfixed by a spot on Nadine's linoleum floor. "I...I can't say..."

Nadine rolled her eyes and decided to speak for him. "Roy don' know 'is real name," she explained, "but he us'ta be call'd da Starling City Vigilante. Now mos' folks jus' call 'im da Hood or da Arrow. 'Dat boy done a lottta good for 'dis city."

"He's still *human*," Maggie insisted. "Which means he wouldn't have a clue what he was getting himself into..."

"He knows they're vampires," Roy countered. "Suspects it, at least."

Maggie folded her hands across her chest, skeptical of this 'Arrow's ability to handle the supernatural. "Really? And how would you know that?"

"He asks me to tip him off to stuff going on in the Glades. Couple nights ago he asked me to find out if a vampire was killing people around here..."

"A *killer*," Nadine corrected, "who be makin' his killin' look like vampires is wha' he ask you to find, boy. Don' lie to me *or* her, y'hear, boy?"

That was all that Maggie needed to hear. "See? Your friend has no idea what he's dealing with. And if you send him into that club he's going to get himself killed." Maggie got up and pulled out her cell phone. "But I do know some people who know what they're doing." She dialed a number that she knew better than she knew her own and waited for the person on the other end to pick up.

After a few too many rings, a woman in Chicago picked up the phone...although she was none too happy to do so. "Do you have *any* idea what time it is?" asked Murphy.

"I wouldn't have called if it wasn't important."

The sound of Maggie's voice caught Murphy's attention and brought her to adrenaline-fueled wakefulness in an instant. "Mags? What is it?"

"There's a Red Court nest here in Starling City. It's the biggest I've ever seen, and highly organized."

Murphy rubbed her eyes as the initial shot of adrenaline wore off. "How big?"

"I counted at least thirty on first glance."

"Jesus," Murphy exclaimed, "no wonder the big guy sent you there. How organized is 'highly organized'?"

"They're running one of the bigger underground nightclubs in the city, and I think they're pushing Kiss as a street drug."

"Which means they've got money," Murphy mused, "and probably a well-stocked pantry."

Maggie grimaced, knowing that 'well-stocked pantry' was their euphimism for a pen full of drugged-out hostages that they could feed on at their leisure. "That's my guess, yeah."

"What do you need?"

"Reinforcements."

Murphy swung her feet onto the floor and cracked her neck. "Family ok, or you think you need more than that?"

Maggie smiled at the idea of seeing her 'family' for the first time in a while. "Family's fine. It'll be good to spend the time with you guys."

"You have a very twisted idea of positive family bonding time, Mags," Murphy teased. "I'll see you soon."

Maggie chuckled as she hung up the phone and faced her very confused new friend. "Who were you calling?" he asked.

"Expert help," Maggie replied. "They'll be here this afternoon." She turned to Nadine with an expression of apology the woman was far more likely to feel than see. "Unfortunately, Miss Nadine, that also means I will have to check into a hotel and forego your lovely hospitality..."

"S'alright," Nadine excused Maggie, shrugging off the apology. "I wouldn't know wha'ta do wid all 'dose people in ma house, anyway..."

#

Sara stared at her father, dumbfounded. "I...I have another sister?!" Harry nodded.

"And she's here? In Starling City?" Harry nodded again.

Oliver was the only one quick enough to get Sara a chair to collapse into. "I have another sister..." she repeated, still too shocked to be able to think about anything else.

Diggle, though, seemed to be catching on to the bigger picture. "Well, that just made things a little more complicated..."

"How do you think?" asked Felicity.

"*R'as Al-Ghoul* is in Starling City," Diggle replied, speaking the infamous name slowly to emphasize its importance. "We're talking about the guy who *trained* the guys we've been fighting. And in some cases trained the guys who trained the guys we've been fighting. Guys that only Harry's been able to take out on his own, and only then by taking out everything else in his path. Trying to protect two people was bad enough. Now we have three."

Both Sara and Harry's minds went to the same place at the same time. "Laurel."

Oliver was in full agreement. "Everyone else can hold their own against the League long enough to at least escape. If they go after Laurel, she'd dead on the spot. We need to protect her first."

"You going to go take her out tomorrow?" Felicity teased, trying to goad Oliver into showing his feelings for the missing Lance daughter.

Oliver, though, shook his head. "Last time...didn't go well. I'm probably not the best one to protect her this time."

"I'll do it," Harry volunteered.

All attention turned to the wizard. "Are you sure you're ready?" asked Oliver.

Harry nodded. "It's been like riding a bike, so far...more or less. Besides, if you can't do it and she doesn't know that Sara's even alive, who else is there?"

"I can protect her from a distance," Sara argued, "just like I've been doing so far..."

Harry shook his head. "From what you told me before, this guy is looking to hurt *you* by going after us. If you're out there right now, it increases the chances he'll go after you first, and I just can't let that happen. If we're lucky, all that will happen is that I get some good father-daughter time with Laurel. She could probably use it, anyway."

"And if we're not lucky?"

Harry sighed, knowing that there was no real way to win that side of the argument. "If we're not lucky, then I guess it'll be a crash course of how much I can remember."

Sara was not looking at all pleased with the situation. "And what the hell am I supposed to be doing in the meantime?!"

"Help me find your other sister," Oliver replied calmly. "We can't do anything to protect Maggie if we don't know where she is."

Sara sighed, knowing that Oliver had a point. "She was scouting out the club with a guy...Roy, I think, was his name."

Oliver, Diggle and Felicity perked up immediately. "Roy?" asked Oliver. "Roy Harper?" Sara nodded, and Oliver jumped out of his chair, moving to get dressed in the Arrow's suit. "If Roy knows Maggie and knows where Maggie is," Oliver finally declared, "he'll tell me."

"But they weren't looking for R'as Al-Ghoul. They were scouting out the club," Sara insisted.

"Why would they be scouting out the club?" asked Diggle. "If they're not going after R'as Al-Ghoul?"

"They seemed to find something at the club suspicious," Sara replied. "Maggie had Roy scouting for 'super pretty people'."

Harry shook his head, chuckling as he thought about how much his daughter's investigative techniques sounded a lot like his own. "She was looking for vampires," he explained. "They like to appear hyper-attractive. Supermodels, porn stars, that type of thing. Red Court is particularly fond of looking like porn stars."

Any good humor Harry might have felt died when he saw the worried look on his daughter's face. "Dad, Maggie and Roy high tailed it out of there when they scouted out the place, and they thought they were *surrounded* by vampires. There could have been thirty of them in there, at least. *I* left because I saw R'as Al-Ghoul. He looked like he was running the place."

Harry responded to Sara's description of the situation with a bitter chuckle that sparked Oliver's curiosity. "Care to share the joke with the rest of us, Harry?"

Harry leaned back on the staircase, shaking his head in amazement at how everything, after so many years, had seemingly come full circle. "A nightclub in the Glades full of Red Court vampires who are in cahoots with the leader of a worldwide league of master assassins? It's starting to seem like old times."

#

Roy approached his own front door cautiously, jumping when the sound of an alley cat bouncing off of a metal garbage can startled him. He had been walking on eggshells from the minute he left Nadine's, jumping at every odd sound and trick of the light. He thought about the Arrow, and the Arrow's mission to take down the bad guys and save Starling City. _But vampires? In the Glades? Gotta wonder if the Arrow has seen *that*..._

"I've been looking for you."

Roy nearly jumped into the metal roof outside his front door when he heard the deep voice of the Arrow. "Jesus," he exclaimed, before kicking himself as he remembered his childhood Bible classes and the mission of his new 'friend'. "How do you *do* that?"

"I've been looking for you," the Arrow replied, ignoring his question entirely. "I tried the alley behind the club, but..."

Roy silenced him with a raised hand. "I lost that job, sorry. If you need me, you can probably check here for now."

The Arrow got straight to business. "You've been seen in the company of a woman named Maggie Carpenter."

Roy swallowed hard, a shot of panic running down his spine as the Arrow mentioned Maggie's name. "She's a friend of a friend I went to to look into that vampire stuff you asked me to look into. What about her?"

"I need to meet with her," the Arrow told Roy.

"Is this about the vampire murders?" Roy asked, remembering everything that Maggie had just told him. "Cause I'm not entirely sure you know what you're getting into. That club..."

"Set up the meeting," the Arrow insisted, ignoring Roy's warning and the shiver that had clearly run down his spine. He handed Roy a business card that was blank save for a pre-printed phone number. "Send a text when she's ready to meet. It's very important that this meeting happen as soon as possible."

Roy stared at the card, surprised to have gotten such proactive contact information. "Finally, a phone number," he declared with a chuckle. "Hey, can I call you if...?"

The Arrow was gone. Roy sighed as he scanned the area, knowing before he even looked that there was going to be no trace of the vigilante. "Can I call you if she has any questions?" Roy asked the air. "'Cause I just know she's gonna have a million questions..."


	9. Chapter 9

"I can't remember the last time we did this..."

Harry smiled as he slowly strolled with his daughter along the waterfront, enjoying the crispness of the late morning air even as the chilled winter wind blew briskly against their coats. "You're still thinking about your cases, aren't you?"

"No!" Laurel exclaimed, with an exaggerated defensiveness that Harry wasn't buying for a second. "Yes," she finally admitted, blushing.

"Can't take a day off, even when you need one, huh?" asked Harry.

"Gee," Laurel teased, her voice dripping with sarcasm, "I wonder who I inherited that particular trait from?"

"Your mother, obviously," Harry argued, matching his daughter tease for tease with a broad smile. He blushed, knowing that 'bringing your work home with you' had been an unintentional consequence of his old job, as well.

Laurel returned her father's smile before turning her attention back to the water. A melancholy expression passed over her features. "It took a long time for me to even be able to look at the ocean again after..."

"Yeah," Harry agreed, understanding Laurel's reference to the shipwreck that had changed all their lives. "Me too."

Laurel sighed, a woeful sound that made it very clear to Harry how much she was still hurting. "I still miss her, you know? Every day I wish she was here for me to argue with..."

Harry had to resist the urge to chuckle, having just argued the previous night with the woman that Laurel was referring to. "I miss her, too," he lied, although nowhere near as smoothly as he would have liked. Laurel's reference to her 'long-lost' sister encouraged Harry's mind to wander from Sara to Oliver and his crazy 'team'. "Hey, can I ask you a question?"

"Sure," Laurel replied with a shrug as they walked. "What is it, dad?"

"You've got so much going on right now, especially with Moira Queen declining her plea deal...on top of all that, do you think you should really be spending so much time and energy going after the vigilante?"

Laurel rolled her eyes, not surprised that *this* was what they were about to get into an argument about. "Dad..."

"Just...just hear me out," Harry insisted. "Honey, you were overworked and underpaid long before you got to the DA's office, and now it's even worse. Now, I know from personal experience that hunting down the vigilante can consume your every waking moment if you let it."

"What are you trying to say, dad?" Laurel countered, pushing her father to get to the point.

Harry sighed before answering his daughter's question. "Laurel, I'm saying maybe you should let the hunt for the vigilante go on the back burner...at least until things cool off a little."

"Cool off?" asked Laurel, a little exasperated by the thought that her father would even consider such an idea. "When do things ever 'cool off'..."

"I-I-I'm just saying," Harry stammered, thrown off by Laurel's anger, "since he's not trying to kill people anymore..."

Laurel was now fully angered by her father's attitude. "Not *trying* to kill people?! Don't tell me you're *defending* him now?"

"I'm not trying to defend him," Harry countered defensively. "But...but have you even thought about why he might be doing what he's doing? About all the good he's doing in helping catching the bad guys the police just don't have the resources to go after..."

Laurel stormed off, her face expressing pure fury. "I can't believe you're defending him..."

Harry watched his daughter storm off, wondering what he had said...and then kicking himself as he realized he had not been talking to Laurel about the vigilante as a 'hypothetical stranger'. He had been trying to talk Laurel about backing off the quest of their mutual friend, Oliver Queen.

Even though Laurel had no idea that was what *he* was talking about. "Nicely done, Harry," he said to no one in particular. "Way to pull guard duty..."

He then ran off to do what he could to keep protecting Laurel...from a more discrete distance.

#

Friday morning came all too quickly for Roy's taste. He walked into Verdant with a mixture of disappointment, regret...and nerves. Sure, he was there to pick up his 'last paycheck' so that he could save Thea the trouble of mailing it. It was safer to pick up the check anyway...

The truth, though, was that he was really there to see if there was any possible way he could talk Thea into taking him back. Yes, he owed the Arrow his life...but he owed it to Thea, too. She was the best thing that had ever happened to him, and he loved her with all his heart. So if that meant he was going to have to choose between helping Arrow save the city and her, well, she was going to win every time.

He knocked on the door to the office, surprised to see it empty. "Hello?" he called out, "Thea? I...came by for my check, I hope that's all right..."

A tall, thin, man with a mop of dark hair streaked with blond opened the door. Roy thought nothing of it; the man was someone he knew very well. "Hey Derek," Roy greeted the bartender, "you seen Thea?"

"Hey, Roy," Derek returned Roy's greeting by clasping the other man's forearm, "how you doin'? I heard you two broke up again. Man, that sucks..."

"Yeah, tell me about it," Roy agreed. "I was hoping to say sorry and pick up my check. You seen her?"

Derek shook his head. "Nah, man. I had to close up last night. She ran off to scout out some hot new club and never came back last night. Got a smoke, bro?"

Roy tried to keep his expression casual, handing Derek a cigarette even as a shot of panic ripped through his soul. "Really? Which club?"

"Some new place not to far from here," Derek shrugged, "bay-so ro-joe or something like that..."

Roy lost all ability to keep calm, cool and collected, grabbing Derek roughly by the shoulders. "Beso Rojo? Thea went to Beso Rojo last night?" When Derek nervously nodded, all thoughts Roy had of picking up his check were long gone. He took off as fast as his legs could carry him, barreling through the doors of the club and heading straight for the one place he could think of to go. To the one person he *knew* could save Thea.

He just hoped and prayed that he wasn't already too late. "AUNT NADINE!" he screamed, banging on the door so loud he thought people next door were probably calling the cops to report the noise disturbance. "MAGGIE! I NEED YOUR HELP!"

"WILL YOU HUSH UP, CHILD!" Aunt Nadine called out from the other side of the door. She opened the door, showing Roy that she was still in her dressing gown...and in a very foul mood. Until she read the mind of the young man in front of her. "Oh, Roy," she gasped, trembling with fear both for her adopted nephew and for the woman he loved. "Baby, I'm so sorry..."

Roy was in no mood to be consoled. "Where's Maggie, Aunt Nadine?"

"Right here," Maggie replied, bleary-eyed and confused from a lack of sleep. "Where's the fire?"

"My girlfriend," Roy told her. "She's been taken by the vampires. I've gotta go get her out of there..."

"Not just yet," Maggie warned through a yawn.

Maggie's rejection of Roy's idea stopped him in his tracks. "Not just yet?! Maggie, they'll kill her! They may already have..."

While the fear in Roy's voice broke Maggie's heart, it didn't deter her from her logic or her plan. "If we go in there now, guns blazing," she told Roy, "they'll kill both of us *and* her. We need to wait for my friends and come up with a plan."

Roy was in a panic. "She'll be dead by then," he insisted, "and I can't wait that long." He pulled out his phone and sent the text he had been putting off sending all morning.

"What did you just do?" asked Maggie, her tone half curious and half warning.

"I called my friend," Roy replied. "He'll be here in a few minutes."

"Your friend is mortal," Maggie argued, "and unless he's got some special fighting skill that you're not telling me..."

"Well, I may be 'only mortal'," a deep voice answered from the doorway, "but I like to think I can hold my own." When Roy turned around to see the Arrow standing behind him, the Arrow...shrugged. "I was in the neighborhood."

Roy was the first to speak to his ally, determined to plead his urgent case first. "The vampires I told you about last night? They've taken my girlfriend. I need to go in there and get her back."

The Arrow backed into Aunt Nadine's back door, accidentally knocking out his voice changer in the process. "Thea?" he gasped. the emotion in his voice clearly showing through.

Roy nearly fell over himself when he realized that, without the voice changer, he knew exactly who was underneath the green hood in front of him. _Oliver?_

Maggie, for her part, seemed unconvinced by Roy and Oliver concern for the girl that, apparently, both of them knew. "These are not normal human fighters," she warned him. "They're vampires. They're stronger than we are, faster than we are, and they'll heal from any bullet or...arrow...that you throw at them. I'm sorry, but you're just not equipped to handle this fight. Especially not alone..."

"I'm not alone," Oliver countered. "I have help."

"Can they handle swords?" asked Maggie.

"They can," Oliver replied with a curt nod. "So can I."

"Prove it," Maggie insisted.

Oliver, having recognized that his voice changer was no longer working, looked over to Roy...and immediately saw the look of recognition in the younger man. The decision seemingly made for him, he handed Maggie a business card. "Meet me at this address in thirty minutes," he told her. "I'll be waiting."


	10. Chapter 10

_Oliver Queen is the Arrow._  
_Oliver. Queen. is the *Arrow*._  
_Thea's brother is the *Arrow*._

Roy wanted to sit down and let the information sink in. He wanted to take a minute and think about all the implications of the idea that Thea's brother was the one who had saved his life...and had never told him. But he couldn't.

Because if they didn't do something soon, Thea was going to be as dead as everyone thought Oliver had once been.

Still, it did nothing to keep Roy's mouth from dropping open as Oliver Queen stood by the bar at Verdant, his hood open, but otherwise dressed in full 'Arrow' regalia. When he recognized that the two people he had been waiting for had arrived, Oliver approached quickly, offering his hand to Maggie. "Oliver Queen," he introduced himself.

"Maggie Carpenter," Maggie responded in kind, shaking Oliver's offered hand.

Roy could only shake his head in shocked amazement. "Wow..."

While Oliver understood and empathized with what Roy was feeling, he also knew that time was of the essence. "If you will follow me, please," he instructed Roy and Maggie, acting very much like the CEO he was in the 'real world', "I believe we have business to discuss?"

Roy's head kept shaking as he watched Oliver punch a set of numbers into a keypad and opened a door to what appeared to be door to a secret section of the basement that he had never noticed before.

Maggie, though, seemed to be unwilling to let the display of technology around her change her mind. "Okay, clearly you guys are well funded," she told Oliver, "but that doesn't change anything about what you're going up again...Sara!" Maggie did seem truly surprised to see the girl from the previous night's rescue standing in the back of the basement area, waiting for her. "What are you doing here? Do you work for Mr. Queen?"

Sara couldn't help herself from chuckling at the idea. "I suppose you could say we're in a...partnership," she replied, leveling a teasing smirk at Oliver as she did. The smile, though, faded quickly. "But I have my own reasons for going after Beso Rojo."

Maggie carefully studied both Sara and Oliver, impressed to see that they both carried themselves with the same warrior's demeanor. "I've seen Sara fight," she told Oliver. "Can you...can you two work together? As a team?"

"If we need to," Oliver replied.

"Then you just might make it out of this alive," Maggie declared, satisfied by Oliver's response. She then turned to the other two people she noticed in the room. "What about you two?"

Felicity threw her hands up in a gesture of surrender. "I'm just technical support," she declared. "I'm just here to help you guys get ready for the fight, not go in there and do the fighting myself."

"Fair enough," Maggie agreed, cracking the first smile that she had allowed herself since entering the basement. She waved her had to indicate their surroundings. "This stuff your idea?"

"The tech side," Felicity replied with a shrug. "Most of it is Oliver, though."

Maggie took another careful the very well-appointed fighting setup. It reminded her of some of the tools and training spaces they had back home. _Perhaps Queen is better prepared for this than I'm giving him credit for..._ "What do you know about Red Court vampires?" she asked Felicity.

Oliver and Felicity, in particular, broke into wide smiles...as if they knew something that Maggie didn't. Oliver tilted his head back in the direction of the basement stairs. "Why don't you ask our resident expert on the subject?" he told Maggie. Confused at the declaration that there was someone else in the room that she hadn't already seen, Maggie turned around to face the stairs...

Her heart started to race as soon as the veil spell was lifted. _It can't be,_ she thought in stunned denial. _There's no way..._ She approached the stairs cautiously, not wanting to break the image if it were some sort of dream-vision, and yet not really believing the evidence of her eyes. The possibility that what she was seeing was actually *real*. That he was here. Standing right in front of her. "Daddy?"

Harry approached with an equal level of caution, slowly coming out of the shadows and into the light. "Hi pumpkin," he finally greeted her sheepishly.

Maggie gasped at the sound of the voice that she knew as well as her own. The voice that she, somehow, had been able to hang on to all her life. "It's you," she whispered, tears starting to travel down her cheeks as slowly as she was moving. Those two words had brought her whole mission to Starling City into perfect clarity. God hadn't brought her there to take care of a nest of vampires or to investigate the appearance of a new, previously unknown wizard. God had brought her there for *him*. The one thing that she had wanted all her life. "It's really you, isn't it?"

Harry, for his part, was staring at Maggie with an equal sense of wonder and astonishment. "You look so much like your mother..." he whispered, his voice breaking at the thought of the woman he had loved and lost to the enemy they were now fighting. "God, you're so beautiful..."

Those last words were more than Maggie could bear. She ran toward the vision full-speed, her heart leaping in her chest when she finally realized that he was there, he was *real*, and that she could finally wrap her arms around him like she had wanted to do for her whole life. The smell of him...the smell sent her mind back to that awful day, the day she had been running from her whole life. But she didn't care. That day was a bad dream. A terrible, awful memory. But that was in her past.

This was *now*.  
And here, in the now, he was really *here*.

Harry buried his own face in Maggie's hair, the tears flowing freely down his own cheeks. He never thought he would ever live to see this moment. The daughter he had given up, that he had entrusted quite literally to God's care, returned to him. And yet here she was, embracing him so tightly that his back was starting to hurt from the force. He was so far beyond caring that she could break his back if she wanted to. It didn't matter one bit. "It's been so long," Harry finally admitted, his voice breaking from the emotion of the moment. "I thought you would have forgotten all about me."

Maggie pulled out of the embrace, wiping her tears away as she tried to process Harry's last words. "*Forget* you? How could I possibly *forget* you? If I even *tried* to call pop 'dad', he would immediately launch into some story about how you helped him or saved the world in some way or another. Or both. There was no way that I could have ever forgotten about the 'great Harry Dresden'." She pulled his hands into hers, her own voice breaking as she thought about how much her foster father would have wanted to see this moment. "Or that I was the great Harry Dresden's daughter."

Harry suddenly found himself unable to meet Maggie's eyes as old guilt found its way back to the surface. "I thought you would hate me, especially after all this time..."

The idea that Harry was proposing was horrifyingly foreign to Maggie, and it showed on her face. "Hate you?"

"For leaving you," Harry confessed. "For...for not being able to protect your mother..."

Maggie mouthed a silent "oh", suddenly understanding the source of her father's words. The events of Chichen Itza were as etched on his memory as they were on hers, but, evidently, they had very different perspectives on what happened that day. "Mom gave her life to save mine. It was her choice. You had absolutely *nothing* to do with it."

"But," Harry countered...then stopped, finding himself suddenly unable to say the words. "But...but I..."

Maggie knew where her father was going, and stopped him before he had a chance to get there. "Dad, if you had talked to me ten years ago, I might have been *mad* at you. But that's it. And since then..." her voice trailed off as her expression showed a hint of the very familiar haunting pain of dark memories that Harry himself was well acquainted with. "Dad, that thing you killed was *not* mom. And I refuse to let you think anything otherwise. Is. That. Clear?" Harry shook his head, chuckling at his daughter's demand. It was not the response that Maggie had expected to hear. "What?"

"You," Harry replied, "you...sounded so much like your mother just then."

Maggie smiled wistfully at her father's comment. "You should tell me more about her sometime."

"I will," he agreed warmly. "I promise."

Maggie squeezed her father's hands to seal the deal before pulling her hands away from his. "And as for that whole nonsense about me being mad at you for leaving me to be raised by the Carpenters..." She pulled the sword out from the holster on her back and held it between them. "I trust you know exactly what this is?" When Harry nodded, Maggie continued, "dad, I grew up around such an overwhelming amount of love that I took up the 'sword of love' and my pop's mantle as a Knight of the Cross to express my gratefulness for everything that had been done for me. God does everything for a reason. I don't regret any of it. And pardon the expression, but I sure as *hell* don't hate you for it."

Harry felt like a five-ton weight had just been lifted from his shoulders. "Thank you," he whispered. He tucked a wayward lock of dark hair behind her ear. "God, there is so much I want to ask you..."

It was then that Maggie finally remembered her surroundings. "And I have a ton of questions to ask you, too," she agreed. "But right now we've got a raid to plan. You're in, right?"

Harry's smile threatened to split his face open in radiant joy. "Sweetheart...wild horses couldn't drag me away at this point."


	11. Chapter 11

Roy, for his part, was pacing the length of Felicity's computer workstation, impatient to get going and wondering why everyone else around him seemed to be treating Maggie's introduction to Officer Lance as some sort of 'sacred' event. "This is ridiculous," he grumbled. "Why the hell are we giving them so long for a simple introduction..."

Felicity shushed Roy, annoyed that the street kid seemed so intent on ruining such a unique and special moment. "Harry is Maggie's *father*," she whispered harshly, "she hasn't seen him since she was eight years old..."

Roy's annoyance vanished when he understood the circumstances surrounding the reunion. A minor question, though, continued to stick out and bother him. "I thought his first name was Quentin," Roy commented, confused.

"Shhhhh!" Felicity exclaimed, fed up with Roy's pestering.

When father and daughter came back to the main meeting area, it was clear that both of them had been crying. Harry decided to take the lead. "Guys," he announced to the group, squeezing Maggie's hand for support, "I'd like to introduce you to my daughter, Maggie Carpenter."

"Maggie Dresden-Carpenter," Maggie corrected.

"Really?" asked Harry, clearly surprised.

Maggie squeezed her father's hand in repsonse. "Told you I never forgot you." Harry opened his mouth to speak...then closed it when he realized that no words were going to come out. So Maggie decided to bring the group's focus back to what they had come there to do. "So," she began, squeezing her father's hand again, "you clearly have an expert on the Red Court working with you. What do you know about Beso Rojo so far?"

"We know it's a nightclub," Felicity began, opening a file of papers and reading from the top sheet. "Opened by a shell management company shortly after the quake..."

Roy looked at the roomful of premium computers, then back at Felicity's paper file, intensely confused by the disconnect between them. "Wait, why is she reading from paper? A computer setup like this could probably get us any information we could ever want..."

Maggie turned her attention to Roy. Her expression showed deep sympathy for the plight of her friend...and his frustration at being out of the loop. "I guess you don't know about my dad, huh?" she asked him. Roy's brow furrowed as he shook his head. "My dad's a wizard, Roy. If we turn on those computers with him around they'll fry."

Roy's eyes went wide for the briefest of moments before he remembered exactly who he was talking to...and what they were there to do. Once the concept settled in Roy's mind, though, it sparked an idea. "You're a wizard?" he asked, turning to Harry. When Harry nodded, Roy tried to present his idea. "Can you...do you have any way to tell us if Thea's still alive?"

Harry caught on to Roy's line of thinking right away. "I do," he told the group, inspired and energized by the presence of his long-lost daughter at his side. "Do you have anything really personal of Thea's? A necklace, a watch, anything she kept on her all the time?"

Oliver spoke up. "I think her purse is still in her office," he suggested. "I'll go get it."

He headed toward the staircase...until Diggle stopped him. "You're not exactly dressed to be seen in the club, Oliver, and it's getting close to open. I'll go."

When Oliver looked down and realized that he was still dressed as the Arrow, he immediately recognized that his friend was right. "Thanks, Dig," he agreed.

"How would you know where Thea's purse is?" Maggie asked Oliver as Diggle climbed the stairs.

"She's my sister," Oliver replied.

Maggie raised a curious eyebrows in Roy's direction. "*He's* Thea's brother?"  
Roy nodded and winced, fully understanding where Maggie was headed. "Yep."  
"And he's this Arrow figure you've been working with?" Roy nodded again.  
"And you've had no idea this whole time?"

Roy turned to Maggie, clearly annoyed at the way she was pushing at his shortcomings. "Yeah, what about it?"

Maggie was unintimidated, and it showed in her teasing smirk. "Just...interesting, is all..." Roy was stopped from any attempt at coming up with a counter-argument when Diggle came back downstairs carrying a small woman's purse.

Harry scanned the contents of the purse as Diggle spilled them out onto the table. "No necklace, no charm bracelet, no watch. God, not even a tube of lipstick! I thought no self-respecting woman left the house without at least a tube of lipstick..."

Oliver cut Harry off when he saw what *was* in Thea's purse. "There! I gave her that stone when I got back from the island. It's a symbol of our relationship."

Harry picked up the smooth stone etched with chinese symbols. "So this rock is important to her?"

Roy and Oliver both nodded. "One time when we broke up she gave that rock to me," said Roy. "She said if I wanted to get back together with her I should give that back to her."

"So the fact that she has it means you gave it back to her," Harry mused, "which means you're still together..." Roy and Oliver suddenly averted their gaze from Harry, which he noticed immediately. "You two broke up?" Roy nodded, which Harry took into account as he studied the stone. "This stone represents Thea's relationships to the people she loves. When she didn't want to think about those relationships, she deliberately left this rock back at the office."

"Dad, how can you know that it was deliberate?" asked Sara.

Maggie gasped at the first word of Sara's question, but Harry answered the question before she could bring up the issue. "I don't know any woman who would go anywhere without her purse, do you?"

"So what does that mean?" asked Roy.

"It means," Harry replied, clearing away space on the cluttered table, "that this is the perfect focus for my tracking spell." He pulled a couple of hairs from the hairbrush he found on the table and focused his energy on the sweet young woman in his memories and the dangerous situation she now found herself in. Harry then wrapped the hairs around the rock as he whispered his incantation: "Ubriacha, ubrius, ubrium..."

The stone started to glow with a gentle green light. Roy stared at the stone, stunned into silence by the simple display of Harry's power. Oliver, though, was far more curious than surprised. "What does that mean?"

"It means," Harry explained with a growing sense of relief and self-satisfaction, "that as far as I have any power to tell, as long as this stone keeps glowing green they're keeping Thea alive."

"They?" asked Maggie. "You've tied your tracking spell to the Court?"

"Kind of," Harry replied. "You're familiar with the fact that the club is pushing a street drug called the Kiss?" Maggie nodded, so Harry continued, "I think they've found a way to up the concentration so they can keep their potential food docile for longer periods of time. This stone isn't tracking Thea per se, since we already know where she is. It's tracking the amount of the drug in her system."

Maggie was impressed by the logic that her father had put into the spell. "So if the stone starts to increase its brightness we'll know we don't have much time. Good thinking, dad..." When the group looked to her for an explanation, Maggie gave them one. "When a Red Court vampire is about to feed, their saliva works as a mood enhancer and anesthetic."

"Sure," Felicity commented, "because they want to keep their food happy and pain-free before they kill it."

"In a case like this, it's more like they want to make sure their victim doesn't scream and alert neighboring residents of their impending death," Maggie countered, continuing her explanation. "Anyway, I've believed all along that this 'Kiss' is based on some derivative of their saliva. I take it you got that idea as well?" Harry nodded. "So that's why the spell is so ingenious. Thea's clearly got a high concentration of the drug in her system already. That just means they're keeping her docile somewhere, probably with a bunch of others the vamps want to feed on at some point. If this stone starts glowing a brighter green, we'll know that more of the drug is getting pumped in her system."

"Prepping her to be...eaten," Roy concluded with a nervous swallow. Maggie nodded. "When that warning kicks in, how much time will we have?"

Harry's expression turned grim as he passed the stone to Oliver. "If this glows bright enough we might only have a few minutes."

Satisfied that his sister was safe for the moment, Oliver turned to Maggie. "When we first met you were pretty adamant about the dangers of walking into Beso Rojo without knowing how to handle a vampire. So what do we need to know?"

"Red Court vampires are similar to the stereotypical vampires you see in the movies," Maggie explained. "They've got supernatural speed, strength and senses. There's no ambushing a vampire. They *will* know you're coming. And," glancing over at Diggle and his holstered sidearm, "they're impervious to bullets and arrows. Anything that you can throw at them from a distance will do nothing to them. They'll just feed, heal, get angrier, and come at you twice as hard."

"So how do you kill them?" asked Roy. "Wooden stakes through the heart?"

Maggie shook her head. "Decapitation and sunlight are the only things that are guaranteed to work. Other than that...not much. If you can slice open their abdomens they'll spill out any blood in their stomachs, which weakens them substantially, but that's only temporary."

"We'll need swords, then?" asked Oliver.

Harry nodded. "I've been working under the assumption that you two know your way around them. Am I correct?"

Sara and Oliver nodded, but it didn't seem to easy Harry's level of worry. "What is it, dad?" asked Sara.

Harry turned to Maggie. "How many vampires are in this nest? Rough estimate?"

"At least thirty," Maggie replied.

"Yeah, that's what I was afraid of," Harry muttered. "Given our current circumstances, I don't think four of us can handle that many vampires on our own."

"Current Circumstances?" asked Maggie, clearly confused by the qualifier.

Sara took over bringing Maggie up to speed. "We believe that Beso Rojo may be funded by a human organization called the League of Assassins. I saw their leader when we were at the club the other night."

"I've heard of this League," said Maggie. "Not a nice bunch. Where did you see him?"

"On the second floor catwalk," Sara replied. "His name is R'as Al-Ghoul. His goal is to eliminate the human race because he thinks that will restore 'balance' to the earth. And he has a particular fondness for biologics as his weapon of choice."

"Sounds a lot like the Red Court," Harry mused.

On that point, Sara and Maggie seemed to be in full agreement. "I think R'as Al-Ghoul is funding this nest in the hopes that the Red Court will do his dirty work for him," said Sara.

Maggie agreed, "a group of Red Court vampires trained in the highest level human fighting techniques would definitely be a force to be reckoned with." A lightbulb appeared to go off over Maggie's mind as she considered everything she knew about Sara. "That's why you said you had your own reasons for going after Beso Rojo, isn't it? This R'as Al-Ghoul?"

Sara nodded. "I was a member of the League. When I left, their code stated that I was condemned to die. In order to draw me out to kill me, R'as Al-Ghoul has been targeting my family. That's why I want to take out Beso Rojo. Either he has to die, or I will." She crossed the space to grab Maggie's hands and look her in the eye. "Until R'as Al-Ghoul is dead, my family will always be in danger. *Every* member of my family."

The impact of Sara's words wasn't lost on Maggie. Still, Maggie choked up from the from the sincerity that she heard backing up those words. "Thank you," she told Sara. "When I was eight, I was the one in danger. The Red Court used me to go after dad. He got together an army to fight them and he and I are still here. We'll get this guy, Sara. *No one* goes after our family and gets away with it."

Sara smiled, feeling a spark of hope light up in her heart for the first time in years. "You didn't happen to bring an army with you, did you?" she joked.

"No, I didn't bring one with me," Maggie replied, matching her sister's smile. "But their flight touches down in an hour."


	12. Chapter 12

**A/N: **Thanks for the lovely comments, everybody! And thanks for your patience. November has come and gone, and I was lucky enough to win NaNoWriMo and make it to 50,000 words written in Guardians of Shangri La. It's by no means finished, or for that matter ready to be seen by anyone other than me, but at least I've finally gotten a good solid start on it. And now that I'm no longer under the gun of a self-imposed 'deadline', I'm going to balance working on that story with working on this one. And (potentially) its sequel. As always, lots of comments will spur me on even faster! Enjoy!

* * *

The midday sun shone brightly down on the private airstrip where the motley entourage stood waiting next to a pair of large, black stretch limousines. Roy Harper paced around impatiently, bouncing as he fidgeted. "Why are we waiting for this bunch again?" he asked Maggie.

"This...bunch, as you call them," Maggie explained patiently, "consists of the core members of the group that rescued me from the Red Court when I was a kid. And we've been fighting 'em ever since. We *could* go raid the club by ourselves, but the raid's going to be a lot easier with them fighting beside us." She then turned to face Roy and leaned in to conspiratorially punctuate her point by talking directly into his ear. "And we'll be a hell of a lot more likely to get Thea out of there *alive*. Understand?"

The intimidating power in Maggie's voice caused Roy to swallow nervously. Sufficiently chastized, he nodded. "Y-y-y-yes, ma'am."

"So if you're so close to these people," Sara chimed in, "then why did you order dad to stay in the limo?"

"These people all knew...know dad," Maggie replied. "If they see him first thing coming off the plane it's definitely going to start things off on the wrong foot."

A lear jet touched down, taxing to them within moments. The group by the limousines jumped to attention, immediately turning to Maggie to follow her lead. "Impressive transportation for an 'army'," Roy commented.

Oliver, for his part, noticed something different about the transportation choice of Maggie's 'army'. "I have one of those planes," he told Maggie. "They don't seat a whole lot of people. Just how big an army do you have coming?"

"It's...not that kind of army," Maggie hesitantly explained. "Let's just say it's probably going to be more of a...targeted strike force..."

Maggie's explaination was cut off as the plane's three passengers approached. Roy was flabbergasted to see that Maggie's 'army' had so few members. 'Three people? That's it? Your army is *three* people?!"

"Yep," Maggie replied with great confidence. She then scooped up the oldest and smallest of the plane's three passengers into a warm embrace. "Thanks for coming, Murph..."

Murphy shrugged as she pulled away from Maggie's embrace. "You called." She motioned toward the rest of the group that Maggie was waiting with. "New friends?"

Maggie's eyes never left Sara as she answered Murphy. "You could say that."

Oliver offered his hand to Murphy, acting as spokesman for the group. "Oliver Queen," he introduced himself. "Nice to meet you..."

"Karrin Murphy." Murphy introduced herself, shaking Oliver's hand briefly before returning her attention exclusively to Maggie. "Mags, how much...?"

"Almost everything," Maggie replied with a knowing smirk. "Haven't told them much about you guys yet, though."

Murphy frowned as Maggie's reply explained something going on at the edges of her perception. "I guess that's why your friend is making goo-goo eyes at Thomas, then?"

"My friend...?" asked Maggie. She turned around and immediately recognized the inherent danger in the situation. "Uncle Thomas," she chastised, "can you not put a cork in it for one second?"

Felicity's eyes never wavered from her in-depth study of the impossibly beautiful man standing in front of her. "This is your *uncle*, Maggie?" she asked in a dreamy haze. "He looks nothing like..."

Maggie cut Felicity off by extending a second and far more forceful warning to her uncle. "Thomas. Back. Off."

Thomas broke eye contact with Felicity with a sigh. "Sorry, Mags," he apologized. "It was a long flight. I got hungry."

Felicity shook her head, disoriented by losing eye contact with Thomas...and surprised by the last word she had heard him say. "You're *hungry*?" she asked. Her eyes widened as a glossed-over part of her research came to the forefront of her mind. "Are you some sort of...psychic vampire, or something?"

Thomas and Murphy exchanged a look of surprise, impressed with how close Felicity had come to the truth. "Something like that," Thomas replied.

"Why don't we start with introductions," Maggie chimed in, taking over the conversation. "Guys, I'd like to introduce you to my foster sister Molly Carpenter, my uncle Thomas Raith and my 'aunt' Karrin Murphy. Molly's a wizard, Uncle Thomas is a White Court vampire..."

Roy instantly got hung up on the description. "He's a *vampire*? Wait a second, we're in broad daylight!"

"Not *that* type of vampire," Thomas argued with a weary sigh, as if he'd heard the argument a thousand times before. "More than one type of vampire exists. The one's we're hunting are Red Court. I'm White Court. See?"

"No!" exclaimed Roy. His head may have been swimming from everything he had seen and heard in the past twenty-four hours, but Roy was starting to wonder whether or not Maggie could really be trusted. "This guy is your *uncle*?"

Maggie stared Roy down. "Yes. He is." She then turned to her more familiar family to complete the introductions. "Murph, you've already met Oliver Queen. John Diggle, Felicity Smoak. The pissed off and skeptical one over there is Roy Harper." Maggie's voice broke just a bit on the last introduction. "And this is Sara..."

"Sara Lance," Sara shook hands with Murphy, interrupting when she remembered that Maggie didn't know her real last name. "Nice to meet you."

A wave of familiar feeling washed over Murphy when her hand made contact with Sara's. "Have we met before?" she asked, curious as to the source of the feeling.

Sara shook her head. "I'm sure we haven't."

"It's not her." Molly spoke up for the first time since she getting off the plane. "There's something else going on here."

Murphy noticed Molly's high level of distraction. It was as if her mind had never left the plane. "What is it, Molly?"

"I'm...sensing something," replied Molly. "It's coming from one of the limos. Magic. Really, *really* strong magic. Strongest I've felt in a long time."

"How strong?" asked Murphy.

Molly swallowed hard as old memories crept to the surface. "Full wizard. And old."

"You okay?" asked Murphy, noticing how Molly's lower lip was starting to quiver just slightly.

Molly nodded, fighting to keep her warring emotions under control. "The energy I'm feeling. It's just...it's just got a familiar ring to it, is all."

Murphy turned to Maggie. "That new player? You've found them?"

Maggie bit her lower lip nervously. "He's...not exactly a 'new' player, Murph."

That sparked Murphy's curiosity. "Then who is it, Mags?" she asked, her hand on her hip in a wary, slightly defensive posture. "A new warden? White Council?"

"It's pretty clear that we have a lot to discuss," Oliver suggested. "And it's probably not a good idea to do it here. Maggie, why don't you take your team and meet us back at the club?"

Karrin studied Maggie as she nodded in acceptance of Oliver's request and the two groups separated, leaving Maggie with her adopted and extended family. She fell in line with Maggie as they walked the few steps to the limo. "Mags? What's going on here?"

Thomas gasped when he touched the limo, his senses overwhelming him with familiar sensations that just didn't add up. "It can't be..." he exclaimed. "There's...there's no way. It's not possible..."

Murphy was starting to feel a little bit left out of the loop. She turned to Maggie for an explanation, only to discover that the younger woman was now grinning from ear to ear. The expression frustrated Murphy even more. "For chrissake, Mags," she pushed, "will you *please* tell me what the hell is going on here?!"

Maggie opened the door to the limo without ever breaking eye contact with Murphy. "See for yourself."

Warily put on the defensive by Maggie's excitement, Murphy climbed into the limousine...to find a fidgety and nervous Harry Dresden waiting for her. "Hiya, Murph," he greeted her shyly.

Thomas and Molly followed Murphy into the limousine, and their expressions became mirrors of slack-jawed amazement. "Harry?" Molly exclaimed. "It...it's really you, isn't it?"

Harry raised a shy hand in greeting. "Hi grasshopper. Long time no see."

_My god_, thought Murphy. _It's really him_. Her partner. Her best friend. Her powerful wizard ally and protector. The only man she had ever really loved.

The man who had, a lifetime ago, abandoned her to fight the darkness. Alone.

Murphy didn't speak to Harry, at first. She let her fists speak for her instead. The first punch landed squarely in Harry's abdomen, doubling him over so that she could quickly follow up with an upper cut to his nose. "Goddamn you, Harry Dresden," she growled, bitter anger growing to a fury within her. "God damn you straight to hell..."

With two major areas of his body smarting from his injuries and his whole body in shock from the attack being launched on it, Harry didn't know what to protect first. So he simply curled up in a ball against the front wall of the limousine. "Nice to see you too, Murph," he groaned.

"What the hell were you thinking, Harry!" Murphy exclaimed. "You faked your own death. You left me, and Maggie, and everything that you ever cared about, and for *what*?!"

"To protect you," Harry gritted out through clenched teeth. "From me. From the crap that has followed me around my entire goddamn life. After Chichen Itza, I thought that if I was gone, then maybe..."

"Yeah, well you thought wrong," Murphy spat out in retort.

Harry studied Murphy's face as she sat back and stared out the window at the passing scenery of Starling City. She looked old. Tired. And haunted by the memories of more evil than anyone ever should have to deal with. It was a look that he found achingly familiar; he saw it every morning when he looked in the mirror. "I'm starting to get that," Harry admitted. "I'm sorry."

Murphy's face never moved, never wavered from her expression of barely suppressed rage. "Did you ever think about us? Did you even *care*?"

"I thought about you every day, Murph," Harry admitted quietly. "I figured you were safe. Happy. That you had moved on with your life."

Murphy didn't respond. So Molly took advantage of the...lull in the conversation. "How did you drop so far off the radar, Harry? We had no idea..."

Harry frowned, confused by Molly's question. "Why would Starling City have been on your 'radar', Moll? It's halfway across the country."

"While you may have left, 'brother'," Thomas explained, his voice spitting out the moniker with biting sarcasm, "the threat to Chicago never did. In fact, the number of threats increased exponentially in the power vacum left by your 'demise'."

Harry felt like he had been sucker punched a second time. "What did you do?"

"What we always did," Murphy replied bitterly. "We protected the city as best we could."

"Baron Marcone did a lot to help," Maggie chimed in.

The reference to his old ally surprised him. "Marcone?"

Molly nodded. "The supernatural...imposition was starting to be bad for his business. So when he saw what we were doing, he hired us."

Harry's eyes went wide. "He *hired* you?"

Molly nodded again. "Kind of like your agency used to be, but on a much larger scale. We merged with the paranet and started keeping track of all the big threats around the country."

"What about the Wardens?" asked Harry. "The White Council?"

"After you stopped being a thorn in their backsides," Murphy replied, "the White Council took less and less interest in what was going on on this side of the Nevernever. I haven't seen a Warden around in...a good ten years, I guess. At this point if we don't bother them, they pretty much don't bother us."

"That's the reason I came to Starling City in the first place," Maggie agreed. "That explosion you caused a couple of days before I got here was the biggest thing the paranet has seen in years."

Molly studied the expressions flying across the face of her old mentor as he got caught up with what had been going on in his absence. "Why *did* that explosion happen, Harry? We've heard nothing from you or any wizard at your level in at least ten years..."

"I definitely hadn't planned on it," Harry admitted with his own bitter chuckle. "When I left Chicago, I left magic behind. The plan was to leave it behind for good. Forever."

"So what happened?" Murphy pushed, now more curious than angry. "Why'd you fall off the wagon?"

Harry chuckled bitterly when he considered Murphy's use of the old expression. "I have two daughters...two *more* daughters out here," he admitted, correcting himself quickly. "To make a really long story short, one of them is being targeted by a group called the League of Assassins. The 'explosion' took out three of 'em before they could kill her."

"Sounds like you," Murphy quietly agreed, fully aware of the extreme lengths that her Harry would go to (and had gone to) to protect his children.

"Which, unfortunately, leads me to the bad news," Harry continued. "From what we can tell, we believe the League is in bed with the Red Court nest."

Maggie nodded in agreement. "We think the League might be funding them."

"Which would be why this nest has so much more money than the others we've seen," Thomas mused.

Maggie nodded again. "That's why I called, Murph. I can't say what we're going to be walking into when we get to that nest, but it's definitely not going to be a pushover."

"Good," Murphy grumbled, "I'm most definitely in the mood to kill something..." Harry flinched as if Murphy's words had visibly struck him, her complaint only piling on to the guilt he was already feeling. Her heart softened a bit when she saw the pain on her old friend's face. The notch down in Murphy's stress level allowed her mind to connect the parts of Harry's story to some of the things that she had been feeling earlier. "That girl, Sara? She's your daughter, isn't she?"

"Yeah," Harry replied. "How'd you know?"

"Something about Sara felt familiar when I shook her hand," Murphy admitted. "Now I know."

Harry positioned himself so that Murphy only had to tilt her head to look him straight in the eye. "She's the one that the League is targeting," he explained. "And they've already declared that they want to go after me and her other sister to punish her. Which means if they find out about Maggie..."

"They'll go after her, too," Murphy completed Harry's thought.

Harry nodded. "I know that you're mad at me, Murph, and you have every right to be. But please, I'm begging you. Please help me protect my family. Again."

Murphy sighed, looking to Molly and Thomas for support, then finally locking eyes with Maggie...the girl she had loved like she was her own daughter. "When you put it like that," she relented as the limousine pulled up just outside of Verdant, "how could I possibly say no?"


	13. Chapter 13

It looked to be a good night. R'as Al-Ghoul watched with a critical eye for detail as the human and half-human members of the staff at Beso Rojo scurried around beneath him, prepping to open. _Half-human_...the assassin sighed as he considered the odd path that his life's journey had taken him on. While six months earlier he would not have even entertained the possibility that such beings had existed, their meeting over the corpse of Count Gustafson in Sweden had been fortuitous indeed. The arrangement had been simple enough to make: he supplied them with the fodder that allowed their kind to feed and increase their numbers. In exchange they provided the League sanctuary and, more importantly, the base formula for the Kiss. _Just a matter of time, _the assassin mused with a quiet sigh. _Two more days and the drug will be absolutely perfect..._

A man dressed head to toe in black ran up the stairs and bowed deeply when he was in arm's length. "My lord and my leader," he greeted his master.

The master assassin gently place his hand atop the other man's head in a gesture of greeting. "What news?" he asked.

"Our sister has gone to ground, my lord. Our men have not been able to locate her since she was seen here at the club last night."

The master sighed. While it was not the news he had been hoping to hear, it was no surprise. Sara had been one of the few females he had ever trained...because she was also one of the best he had ever seen. "And what about her father?"

"No sign of him either, my lord," the younger man replied.

That was news to the master, and not the good kind. "How did a simple police officer disappear from our sights?"

"Please...please forgive me, my lord," the younger man replied, swallowing hard as his nervousness was starting to grow exponentially. "He-he-he just disappeared. He must be with our sister. She could be protecting him because she knows that we are here..."

"Of course she is protecting him, you foolish child," the master assassin spat back to his apprentice. "He was the only potential leverage we could have had against her!" The master turned away from the man at his feet, grabbing onto the balcony's railing to give himself a place to vent his rage other than by snapping the neck of his most trusted apprentice. _We only have two days left to find her..._

It was then that R'as Al-Ghoul remembered something that Sara had casually told him many years earlier. "The canary has a sister," the master told his apprentice. "Find her and bring her to me. If we have her sister, then *our* sister will be drawn back to us like a moth to a flame."

#

Roy couldn't help himself. He slumped in a corner near the front of the limousine, staring at the man he had been idolizing from a distance for months. His girlfriend's brother. Oliver Queen. The Starling City Vigilante.

The Arrow.

His mind was racing with a thousand questions, and now that Roy had a moment 'alone' with Oliver, his thoughts were bombarded by them all at once. One question stood out to him, though, above all the others. "Does Thea know?"

Oliver shook his head, surprised by Roy's question. "Excuse me?"

"Does Thea know?" Roy asked, repeating his question. "About you? What you're doing in the club?"

Oliver shook his head. "No."

Roy frowned, confused and disappointed by Oliver's answer. "You don't think she has a right to know?"

"Anyone who knows is in danger!" Oliver countered. "Do you really think I can put my sister through that? I've seen how she reacted to the idea of you just *talking* to the vigilante. What do you think she would do if she found out I *am* the vigilante?"

"What about the alternative?" Roy argued. "You go out one night and *you don't come home.* After everything that she went through when you disappeared, what do you think *that* would do to her?"

Oliver stared out the window, unable to look Roy in the eye as he pondered the situation that the younger man had proposed. So Oliver promptly changed the subject. "Felicity," he asked, "have you found anything on these White Court vampires?"

Felicity had her smartphone out and was typing furiously. "White Court vampires are closer to a legend called a succubus than the stereotypical vampire. They feed off of lust and sexual energy."

"How can a succubus be Officer Lance's brother?" asked Diggle.

"I guess you'll have to ask him," Felicity replied.

"Can he be trusted?" asked Oliver, getting to the point.

Felicity shrugged. "Nothing I found says whether succubi should be considered innately good or evil. At this point all I can go by is that Maggie trusts him."

"But can we trust *Maggie*, then?" Roy argued. "She's friends with the same type of...things that are holding your sister!"

"I trust Harry," Oliver countered quietly. His tone made it very clear that he was no longer interested in arguing about this. "And he upended his life to protect these people. If he cares about them that much, then I trust them."

Roy shook his head skeptically as he got out of the limo. "I hope they're worth that trust," he warned Oliver.

"I hope *you* are," Oliver countered, not backing down for a second.

The implications of Oliver's words were not lost on Roy as the older man stared him down. "You can trust me," Roy told Oliver quietly as the door to the limousine separated them. "But you need to remember that you can trust Thea, too."

#

"Nice place you got here," said Murphy, taking her time to appreciate the high ceilings and mix of industrial and modern design of the nightclub.

"Thanks," Oliver accepted the compliment with a shrug. "But it's not mine. It's my sister's."

"And she's been taken by the vamps," Roy chimed in, his eyes never leaving Thomas' gaze as he spoke. He bounced on his toes, clearly showing his growing impatience with the situation.

Thomas recognized the expression on Roy's face immediately. "You are in love with her."

Roy nodded curtly. "Not that you would know what that's like."

A mix of grief and anger washed over Thomas' face. "I have been married for the past fifteen years. My wife passed away three months ago."

Harry's eyes widened as the news took him by surprise. "Justine? What happened?"

"Cancer," Thomas replied, his voice choking on the word. "We did everything we could, but..."

"I'm so sorry," Harry interrupted Thomas as his voice trailed off. He then turned to Roy in angry defense against the younger man's prejudice. "Justine was human, and clearly must have been until the day she died. I *know* how much they loved each other. For his kind, even touching someone who is truly in love with someone *else* causes severe burns."

"Brother..." Thomas commented quietly, trying to get Harry to stop.

Harry continued, undeterred by his brother's plea. "So for him to marry Justine and live with her, every single day for fifteen years without touching her, and then watch her *die*, that tells me that either he's a goddamn masochist or more capable of love than both of us put together." He took a step back, addressing his words to the rest of his Starling City 'team'. "I know that there's a lot you guys don't know and it's easy to get spooked by the idea that my brother's a vampire. But he's saved my life more times than all of you put together, and I have no problem with trusting him with my life this time either. So if you guys are so willing to trust me, then you damn sure better start to be willing to trust him. End of discussion."

"All right, then," Oliver declared, knowing the rest of his team would fall in line. "If you trust him, I trust him."

Felicity, Diggle and Sara all nodded in agreement...leaving Roy as the only holdout. When he realized he was alone in his sentiments, he finally relented with a frustrated sigh. "Fine. Whatever. So when do we go get Thea out of there?"

"You know Thea's still alive?" asked Murphy. "How?"

Oliver pulled the glowing green stone out of his pocket. Harry explained, "Tracking spell. As long as the stone's green she's still alive."

"Then *we* will leave in one hour," Murphy announced. "Sundown is when they're at their most vulnerable. It's be our best shot." She turned to Harry. "Are you sure you're up for this, Harry? It sounds like you've been out of practice..."

"Practice was never my problem, Murph, you know that," Harry replied with a chuckle. "And with the human help they have..."

Harry's last words were news to Murphy, and it showed. "Human *help*? Who would be helping the Red Court?"

"Who would the Red Court be accepting help *from*?" Thomas chimed in. "They've never seen humans as anything more than cattle."

"They're working with R'as Al-Ghoul," Harry replied to both questions. "He runs a group called the League of Assassins."

Murphy visibly shuddered. "I thought they were just legends..." When her team looked at her with expressions of curious surprise, Murphy explained, "Kincaid told me about them once, but he seemed pretty convinced that they weren't real."

"They're real," Harry insisted, "and they're funding this nest, probably to get their hands on the drug."

"The five of us against a nest full of Red Court vampires and master assassins," Murphy exclaimed, shaking her head. "This really is just like old times, Harry..."

The number that Murphy used wasn't lost on Oliver or Sara. "The *five* of you?" asked Oliver.

Murphy turned her attention to Oliver, surprised and slightly annoyed at the idea that Oliver felt he was 'entitled' to be part of the raid. "Well, do you guys have weapons, or were you just planning to buy these beings out of their plan for world domination?"

Harry covered his mouth with his hand, deliberately trying to keep from laughing. His good humor wasn't lost on Molly or Murphy. "What?" Molly countered Harry's laughter quickly. "What the hell's so funny?"

"Perhaps we should step into my office," Oliver suggested. He led the group to a wall in the club and punched a few numbers into an inconspicuous-looking keypad.

Molly started to follow the group through the door that appeared in the wall...until Harry stopped her. "There's a lot of really expensive computer equipment down there," he explained. "We should probably wait up here."

The other wizard rolled her eyes; it was an expression which reminded Harry of the stubborn teenager his apprentice had once been. Her gaze rested at a point above Harry's head. "Wǒ xiǎng yào yīgè shǒujī," she declared.

Harry could immediately feel the shift in the energy around him. "What did you do?" he asked.

"A technology protection veil," she explained. "The computers down there no longer have anything to fear from us."

Harry was impressed, especially when he realized that the spell took no more energy out of his former protege than it took him to light the candles in his hideout. "Nicely done. What was that language you used for the incantation?"

"Chinese," Molly replied. "For 'I want a cell phone'." She patted Harry on the chest as she moved past him and headed toward the basement. "It's a brave new world, teach. Try and keep up."


	14. Chapter 14

**A/N: Sorry it took me so long to get this chapter out. The holidays were a crazier time for me than I had anticipated. But I just wanted to *profusely* thank all of you who have followed and favorited this story and left me reviews spurring me on to come back and work on this some more. It's because of all of you that we're back in business. **

**:-)**

* * *

The entrance to Beso Rojo was bathed in the last rays of late evening sunlight. "Thank God for small favors," Murphy muttered under her breath. If anyone from the club were to look over at the abandoned building across the street, they would have seen an athletically built, petite older woman stretching as she prepared to go for what looked like a casual 'sunset jog'. "At least this keeps the vamps at bay for now."

They wouldn't have seen the rest of the motley strike force hidden just on the other side of one of the building's crumbling brick walls. "That doesn't mean that a crew from the ninja assassin strike force can't jump out at us any minute now," Harry countered, his every sense wide open on high alert. "We should probably get going. Good luck, everyone."

Eight heads nodded in agreement...although two heads couldn't be seen by everyone else in the group. It was one of them who spoke first. "Can you still hear me, Harry?" Felicity asked the group in their earpieces.

"Yeah," Harry replied with a smile and a casual shrug. "Molly's always been much better at defensive magic than I have. Isn't that right, grasshopper?"

Molly smiled as old memories resurfaced. "Still am, teach. Still am."

"Then take your team and get around to the back of the club," Felicity replied over the comm. "I strongly suspect that the pantry is being kept in the back next to the, uh, the 'actual' pantry."

"At which point we wait for the signal and rescue the hostages," Thomas completed Felicity's instructions.

"Wait," asked Molly, "what will the signal be? How will we know when to go in?"

The other 'missing' member of the team spoke up from his perch atop the roof of the building. "Leave that to me," Oliver replied into the comm link.

Diggle smiled. "I'm guessing we will have *no* problem understanding the signal, trust me."

Molly shrugged and nodded, taking Diggle at his word only because time prevented her from asking further questions. "Guess we're burning daylight, then." She turned to Roy. "You comin', kid?" Roy nodded eagerly. "Then stay close. The veil will only stretch so far." Roy nodded again, then jogged over to join Thomas and Diggle, who stood around Molly...before the four of them disappeared.

Harry allowed himself one sentimental chuckle before turning to Murphy and shifting focus to their part of the mission. "So this is what you've been doing, every day, since I...left?" he asked.

Murphy never took her focus off of chambering a round in her weapon. "Pretty much, yeah," she replied.

Harry sighed, years of regret weighing him down in an instant. "I'm sorry."

It was only then that Murphy looked Harry in the eye. The expression on her face showed that she was in no mood to fight past his guilt trip. "Now's not the time, Harry. Not until we get those people out of there, okay?" Harry nodded, pushing his conflicting emotions until they fueled him, centering and channeling them into a column of pure power. Satisfied that Harry was ready to go, Murphy looked up, her mind wandering to the absent member of their team. "What *is* he going to do for a diversion?" she asked.

The sounds of explosions and breaking glass answered Murphy's question for her. "I'm guessing that's it," Harry replied. The pair took off to find that all the windows at the front of club had been shot out, pouring sunlight into the club's main room. Murphy and Harry looked up as a whooshing sound pulled their attention up over their heads. They watched as Sara and Oliver zip-lined through the broken windows. "Stay in the light, guys," Felicity warned everyone through the comms, "as long as you can."

The broken windows did their job; Harry blasted the door open with a quick booming yell of "Forzare!" only to discover that there was no one waiting for them on the other side of the door. Sara and Oliver were swamped; each one attempting to fight off a trio of black-clothed warriors.

They had planned for this. "DUCK!" yelled Murphy.

The two fighters dove away from their opponents. "Forzare!" Harry yelled a second time. The six assassins flew backwards under the crushing power of Harry's spell; their necks snapped with a collective audible crack as their heads hit the hard concrete floor underneath them. Sara gawked open-mouthed at the results of her father's display of power. Harry blushed and shrugged, which caused Sara to chuckle lightly before the group snapped their focus back on their mission.

#

The sound of shattering glass could be clearly heard even at the back entrance to the nightclub; it was a sound that Diggle instantly recognized. "That's the signal. Let's go."

"You're sure?" asked Molly, her voice breaking in a harsh whisper.

"Absolutely," Diggle confirmed confidently. "That had Oliver written all over it."

"All right, then," Molly agreed. "Thomas, you're up."

Thomas closed his eyes to focus his other senses on his target. It didn't take him long to catch on to their scent. "The pantry is not far," he announced. "Follow me." The group followed the blinded vampire through the back hallways of the nightclub until they reached the kitchen. He stopped in front of what looked like the door to the walk-in freezer. When Thomas opened his eyes, they were glazed over, but determined. "Here," he whispered, "behind this door."

Roy pushed his way through the group until he stood in front of the door, saving Thea the only thought consuming his mind. After a couple of tries, though, he pushed back in frustration. "Locked," he grumbled, "and I have no idea how to pick a walk-in freezer...if it's even possible. Are you *sure* this is where they are?"

Thomas was starting to tire of Roy's attitude. It was showing in his mood. "Are you doubting me, *boy*..." he growled.

Molly sensed the change in her old friend's demeanor almost as soon as it happened. "All right, boys," she whispered, deliberately wedging herself into the tight space between the man and the vampire. "Let the professional handle this." She placed one hand on the door handle and her other hand over the lock. "Venteferro malivaso," she whispered, caressing the lock with her thumb as she spoke. The gentle click of the tumblers told her that the spell had proved successful, and she opened the door, pushing the rest of the group behind it as the heavy door swung to the side. "Easy when you know how," she declared, smiling.

Roy ignored Molly's boasting. His thoughts were focused in only one place, and he pushed past Molly to get into the dark storage room as quickly as possible. "Thea," he whispered, caressing the distracted woman's shoulders gently to get her attention. "Thea, it's me. Roy. Can you hear me? Do you understand me?"

Thea pulled her attention away from the single lightbulb that lit the tiny space, her hands feeling roughly around Roy's face to prove that he was really there and not just a hallucination. "ROY!" she squealed loudly, "You're here! You came to rescue meeeeee!"

The loud, high-pitched noise seemed to be more than enough to attract the attention of the nearby vampires. A knot formed in the pit of Roy's stomach as he heard the growling begin in the distance. "Is that what I think it is?" he asked.

"It's not your stomach, if that's what you're asking," Maggie replied. Her sword appeared out of its sheath with a speed that made it look like it had just appeared out of thin air. "Get these people out of here. I got this."

Roy opened his mouth to protest, then closed it when his memory reminded him who he was talking to. "Be careful," he warned Maggie.

Maggie's smile turned mischevious...but never quite met her eyes. "Piece of cake," she countered. "Go."

Roy nodded, then held Thea by her shoulders and gently guided her out of the building, leaving Molly and Diggle to figure out how to get the other dozen bewildered people to follow them.

Molly was the one to come up with a solution. "Ongaku," she whispered, pointing in the direction of the back alley. Diggle tilted his head in curious surprise as the gentle call of an electric guitar solo seemed to inspire their charges to wander out of the room on their own. When he turned to what he could only assume to be the source of the music, Molly simply shruggged. "It worked for the Pied Piper," she commented.

"That was a *flute*," Diggle countered.

Molly rolled her eyes in response. "Whatever. It's working, isn't it?" Diggle nodded. "Then let's get these people out of here."

Diggle nodded again. "You'll get no argument from me. Let's go."


End file.
